


Novissimus. Interrius. Invictus.

by Eiramma



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Armitage Hux Has Issues, Armitage Hux also has powers, Established Relationship, Fluff, Kylo Ren Has Issues, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Romance, The Force, but they work it all out I swear guys, happy ending and all the galactic domination you could hope for, well mostly...they're fighting right now...they'll work it out soon I promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27294550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eiramma/pseuds/Eiramma
Summary: Ever since Hux first heard the lilting song of the Tor, his Mothers dutifully taught him the privileges, and the dangers of hearing the earth sing in a galaxy where the ability to shake planets to oblivion, equates to a death sentence. Now in the thick of the Second Intergalactic War, Hux is finding it increasingly difficult to keep his lineage under wraps. Consumed by his efforts towards his survival and the Order’s victory, Hux unwittingly allows his marriage to splinter, until his own husband has become unrecognizable. All the while the Resistance is laying siege to their borders, their mele led by the legendary General Leia Organa and her precious new hope. The pressure alone would be enough to make a lesser man crumble. With all that being said. Hux has survived this long in a galaxy who wishes him dead for his gifts. So it will take a lot more than a distant husband, a snarling desert rat, and a power lusting corpse of a man to fracture him. Qui vivat Terrae.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	Novissimus. Interrius. Invictus.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys,
> 
> So I originally published this for a hot minute earlier this year, but I took it down because I wanted to rework some stuff...but she's back now and ready to roll. This will be a 3 part story that I hope you guys enjoy! Thanks for taking a peek!
> 
> -Eiramma.

_ “The first week of my trans-galactic travels landed me on the rocky planet of Terraentha, where I witnessed a toddler threaten to level a mountain face with the ferocity of her tantrum. The Imperial Terris Gerit was thankfully able to quell the quaking earth and the distraught child, saving the mountain, but something in me remained unsettled still. After having spent a month here among the Terrae, I now understand the greatest threat to the burgeoning Republic is not in concealed opposing political factions, but rather in those who walk in the open air with earth-fire hair and the unchecked power to level entire planets. I fear for the prosperity of the Republic if these planet shakers are not dealt with swiftly and promptly...”  _

_ -Jedi Knight Alise Fea, of Tris. _

_ Letters to the Chancellor Roe Mombid, of the first Republic Senate. _

_ Concerning the threat of the Terrae. _

__

Starkiller is lost.

Beneath Hux, the Tor sings a raging tune of wounded, volatile earth that shutters with decimating quakes as it all threatens to collapse beneath the feet of the very beings who enslaved it. Underfoot the base’s black polished floor moves in great waves that send more than a few of his crew toppling to the ground, leaving the others scrambling to climb out of their ground pods that line the command bridge’s pit. Hux himself is forced to grip his console with white knuckles to remain upright. Before them frantically beeping monitors rattle violently under the ministrations of the quaking earth, their transparaglass screens shattering in spiderweb-like hairlines that scramble the pulled up schematics into garble gibberish that’s indistinguishable from the neat standard it once was.

The main lights flicker in disorienting flashes similar to the Finalizer’s eternal stroboscopes. They cast changing shadows on the faces of Hux’s petrified crew, though they attempt to hide their fear valiantly with clenched fists and braced bodies. But their eyes can’t hide their terror, especially not when a terrible shake of the ground cracks the command centers floor entirely in half and shatters the viewpoint to smithereens. 

Somewhere a person cries out, glass shards fly through the room like erratic blaster fire. Those with slower reflexes and were stationed in the front of the command center received the brunt of the shattering, flying glass shards creating horrible cuts across skin that draw dribbles of red blood. Hux himself wasn’t quick enough to duck for cover. Luckily he only received a few gashes to the face, while the right side of Jekin’s face has been turned into minced meat. 

But even in all this, his crew remains steadfast; their shoulders carry deep loyalty that was bred into the marrow of their bones through years spent crawling through the mud at the academy. The sort of loyalty earned in blood spilled, not with what runs through your veins. 

Standing before him are brothers and sisters in arms. His brothers and sisters. Hux ran the Synbur circuit with seven of these soldiers and all the others. He spent months in hand-dug trenches naked to harsh winds of the Hovarian desert while the New Republic born canisters of yellow Kilirium gas soared above, cutting through the endless screams of overhead Starships and the rain of blaster fire.

This loyalty Hux earned when during his Seal training, he helped his platoon carry that log up the beaches of Kizer in the pouring rain, with the breath of a wet death breathing down their necks. 

This loyalty he earned again when just before daybreak, during the battle of Vern, Hux crossed no man’s land with nothing but the blaster strapped to his back and stone rings around his fingers; and took out an entire squadron of New Republic soldiers while they slept in their bunks with their breaths still smelling of Corenthian whisky. 

Hux has won this loyalty time and time again with every battle won, with every planet that flies the colors above their capitals, and with Hux’s proven competence as a leader.

And Hux will not squander that loyalty by asking them to remain within this catastrophe. When he received his first command rank, he took an oath.

“Unamo,” Hux barks, drawing the attention of the blonde captain away from mopping up Jekin’s face. 

“Sir!” She acknowledges. There are a few cuts on her face, trails of blood oozing their way down her petite chin, and blue eyes are blown wide with adrenaline. 

“Starkiller is lost,” Hux says, despite his best efforts, with what he knows is a touch of detectable dejection, “relay the order to evacuate the base immediately.” 

“Yes, sir!” Unamo salutes before commandeering a catwalk communications unit that appears to have sustained the least damage.

“If you are unable to patch into the base's main communication line, try commin’ departments individually, starting with their sector leaders, and if that doesn’t work, send out a few mouse droids with the transmission and make your way to a shuttle. I’ll begin to relay the message on foot.” Hux commands before dashing out of the command center, leaving a flurry of movement behind him as his crew begins to collect themselves and their surviving belongings in preparation to begin flooding towards the escape shuttles.

Thankfully the relation of evacuation order comes through communications and in the form of a nervous voice full of unjaded youth, crackling through the PA system. The message is difficult to hear over the sound of the blaring emergency siren that now screams through the halls. But judging by the sea of people, Hux is forced to wade through with stumbling steps. The order has been received all the same. 

He collides fully with more than one erratic private, who in their fear does not notice the three silver strips of his uniform. Hux would normally reprime them for their disrespect towards a superior officer, but these are exceptional circumstances of great impending catastrophe, so Hux will excuse them this once. 

With another great shutter as a series of massive cracks cut deep jagged lines across the western facing wall of the hallway, loosening the plaster, so it falls in pathetic flakes to the floor. Then the lights cut out completely, submerging the panicking hall into complete darkness. 

There is a millisecond when Hux succumbs to complete sensory overload. Ilum is gone, and in its place is the fall of Arkanis. 

Unwelcomed flashbacks of the evacuation of Arkanis flutter rapidly through Hux’s mind; the whirring of the serine overhead becomes the scream of swooping X-winds as they open fire on his village, the shifting of the earth becomes the explosion of cannon fire from distant starships, and the dark is replaced by mud-covered faces and scenes of a rainy village littered with corpses and bloody streams that ran through its cobblestone streets, as it is gutted by the New Republic. 

Hux’s legs have gone dead, wrought with pins and needles that feel eerily similar to the pitter-patter of rainfall against rubber-soled galoshes. The smoke of forgotten burning buildings fills his lungs, which feel as if they’ve shrunk and are now desperately working double-time to pump much-needed oxygen to his brain. But it’s no use, Hux is suffocating in this too warm hallway surrounded by wriggling bodies that soon will be corp--

_ No. _

_ Not Corpses. _

_ Not if he has anything to say about it. _

With a trembling hand, Hux reaches into the collar of his tunic and fishes around for the warm chain of his I.D. tags. Once located, he pulls the chain out in the open. With firm fingers he grips them harshly with his left hand. Hux lets the plates and metal ring strung on the ball chain sear themselves into his skin as Hux slowly forces himself to breathe in counts of three. 

Hux allows himself a moment to adjust to his new surroundings. The presence of his tags wrapped in his tight fist ground him into a new calm as the scenes of terror from Arkanis vanish. He then tucks his tags safely back into his tunic and with a heavy breath, Hux carries onward towards what he presumes to be the necessary end of him. 

Hux wedges himself through the dark, battling waves of sweating bodies, all while struggling to remain on his feet as the ground beneath them threatens to give way at any moment. Eventually, the emergency generator kicks on, bathing the hallway in an ominous red light. 

He nearly makes it out of the fray before a claw-like grip ensnares the sleeve of his greatcoat, tugging him along with the moving crowd. Hux struggles against the offending hand, which refuses to release him. Annoyed with being dragged along by a subordinate like some rag doll, Hux whips around to verbally dismantle who is halting his progress. To his surprise, at the end of that strong hand, Hux finds the worried brown eyes of Mitaka, who ceases his tugging.

“Lutientdent?” Hux scowls, completely perplexed. Mitaka should already be aboard a shuttle by now. 

Mitaka turns away from Hux and resumes dragging the General down the corridor. “Sir, you’ve got to come this way,” he explains while swimming in the current of growing hysteria, “we’ve got to get you to a shuttle.”

Hux blinks. A wave of understanding washes over him, Mitaka came back for him. If he wasn’t so pressed for time, Hux would allow the flicker of warmth he feels in this moment for his subordinate to settle into the roots of his chest. 

But there is no time. So instead, Hux digs his heels in, drawing the Luteindent’s attention. 

“Mitaka, I’ve got to make sure the rest of the base heard the order,” Hux begins to explain in what he hopes is a tone close enough to kindness, his hand working to pry Mitaka’s strong fingers away from the sleeve of his coat. “I’ve got to stay behind. It’s my duty as General, I swore an oath to give up my spot so that another may live.”

Mitaka stares at Hux while worrying about the dry skin of his bottom lip, a series of emotions flash across his young face. “Then I’ll remain with you, sir,” he says with resolution in his eyes but the slightest tremor in his voice. 

Hux finishes prying Mitaka away, shaking his head. “No Mitaka, it is not your place...you’ve got to carry on,” he says firmly, holding the young lieutenant’s gaze, “go on now, get yourself onto a shuttle, that’s an order.”

Hux can see the war in Mitaka’s eyes, as the main wrestles with disobeying a direct command for the first time in his military career or carrying out what may be Hux’s last command. Abruptly the mist fills the Lutientdent's eyes as Mitaka comes to a decision. He takes a step backward, away from where Hux stands firm. “Yes, sir,” he nods his dark head and offers Hux a sharp salute, “it’s--it’s been a privilege.” 

He then turns around and dashes down the hall. Hux presses onward, determined. 

Even though Hux likes to think of himself as invaluable to the Order, he is fully aware that his crew is composed of exemplary officers who would be more than capable of carrying out the Order’s vision.

However, Starkiller is critical to the survival of the Order. They put every asset collected in their early years into this mega weapon with the promise to the Order’s benefactors that they’d use it to bring the galaxy to its knees. But if Starkiller collapsed, as their borders would eventually come closer to the midlying systems and the core, it would be difficult to find planets willing to join their union.

The wealthy interior planets that relish in this corrupt era of the New Republic, thrive off the labor of the oppressed who are too blinded by the propaganda generated by the idea of freedom, to uprise themselves, against a machine focused on profit rather than the welfare of its people. Thus unfortunately in this environment, planetary support of “radical” new ideas such as equal opportunity education, increased taxation of the inflated upper classes, and the abolition of galaxy-wide enslavement would be scarce without the threat of a blaster held against some syncopathic politician’s skull. 

And until 4 minutes ago, the Order had the biggest one. 

But if Hux succeeds in his planned endeavor, Starkiller, even if it’s just its shell to rebuild upon, will survive and thus Order will prevail as well.

And if he doesn’t, well then maybe he will have bought enough time for the last shuttle to evacuate, and that will be enough. 

So Hux will remain to quell what quakes he can, and if this is to be the end of him and the Terrae, then so be it. 

Once through the initial fray, the hallways closer to the base's normally buzzing department of Terra Forming Affairs and Weaponeering are ghostly in their vacancy. In the main lab Data-desks with their various pending projects still pulled up have been hastily abandoned, jittering cups of caf have been left cooling, and hard copies of collected data files are left scattered across the durasteel floor where they now flutter with the shakes of the earth. Paper crumples noisily under the steadfast heel of his boot. He makes his way towards a twin pair of blast doors at the end of the massive laboratory. With shaking fingers he enters his code into the access panel located on the door’s right and prays it won’t jam. 

When the bay doors give way, Hux is both relieved and immediately assaulted by the ever frigid winds of Ilum. The chill of the air is brutal on his lungs, its sharp edges cutting into the soft flesh like razors as his body is shocked into the change in the environment that is so different from the regulated atmosphere of his beloved ship and the base's interior. Even in the unfolding chaos, dense snowflakes fall lazily accumulating, catching on the fibers of his coat where they remained until his body heat melted them away, turning the stark gray a speckled black. Despite the current events, it's a fine day, though the darkened sky above would make you think it well into the night.

Before pressing on, Hux fiddles around in the inner pocket of his greatcoat, fingers fumbling in their searching haste. He quickly produces a pair of smooth black marble stone rings, which he shoves onto his middle fingers. The stone is cool against the anxious heat of his skin and he can feel the filo of Arkanis rumbling through the scant piece of stone, thrumming steadily through the Tor. The presence of his home planet wrapped securely around his thin fingers is grounding, and the echo of the blessings his Mothers uttered over them soothes his erratic heartbeat.

He rushes on into the cold.

On the surface of Ilum, it’s pure entropy. As Hux runs into the cold, the ground beneath his feet begins to secede itself to the pressures of the imploding planet. Under Hux’s stumbling steps, colossal cracks form, creating terrible patterns of decay in Ilum’s surface, exposing a darkness that carries on into the planet’s core. Masses of land sink and rise along shifting tectonic plates, their motions uprooting trees, crumbling mountains, and diverting oceans. Actual chunks of stone have begun to break away, the void above dragging the land into it’s gaping maw where it will be swallowed into oblivion. 

“Hells,” he curses and presses onward.

By the time Hux’s wobbly strides have carried him to a suitable clearing, Ilum is screaming . The ground beneath his feet rumbles in great waves that rock his body like a volatile oceanic surf, and he can feel through the Tor song the planet disintegrating. He can feel the agony Ilum is feeling on the precipice of terrible death, in the wake of its gruesome murder. 

Hux has to quell these quakes. 

He has to stop the planet from collapsing. 

So Hux sets his feet and commands the crumbling Tor to ensnare his legs calf-high to steady himself on the unstable earth. He keeps his core tight and arms close to his rib cage, just like his Mom had taught him in his youth. Hux sings to the Tor through the fraying filo, calling it to tether to his own. Ilum quickly finds the link and latches on with a tight grasp that pulls a grunt from the back of Hux’s throat. There is immediate pain, Hux’s bones feel as if they're cracking just as Ilum is cracking, he breathes deeply and powers through. He convinces himself that this is just an average quake, just on a larger scale but it can be quelled all the same.

And then in all of this, Hux finds much to his surprise, Kylo Ren. 

He can feel the other man’s looming presence through the Tor as it hums steadily, like a drumbeat, his thick filo tethering itself to Hux’s own heart. Hux feels each of Ren steadfast steps reverberating through the Tor, as he dashes through the timbering forests of Ilum pursuing-

Pursuing who?

Ah.

Of course.

_ Her. _

The Jakkuian scavenger.

Hux can only construct a watery picture of her rodent-like face--complete with a pointed nose and a pair of beady brown eyes that remind Hux of a Savex Sand-Furrini--in his mind's eye, but his filo recognizes her weak presence immediately. It softly whimpers through the Tor, like a sniveling long-haired Locaria, weak and useful only to its predators. 

Only ever being tethered to sand and fruitless hopes, tends to do this one’s Tor song, a lack of tangibility makes it pitiful and pathetic. And yet this is the basket that the Resistance has put all their Porg eggs into. This worthless scrap of a girl. This wannabe Jedi. 

_ Pathetic creature. _

And with her is the loathsome traitor, whom Hux knows is to blame for all of this. His stumbling footsteps are as wobbly as his constitution, Tor song inconsistent in its carrying tune, it is littered with an intolerable amount of fear. Even as he runs forward Hux knows he desires to retreat. 

Their presence on Ilum explains Ren’s own.

Explains why instead of remaining on the bridge of the Finalizer --where the Order’s heir apparent would have been safe--Ren was dashing about the collapsing planet, no undoubtedly with that fucking saber of his, thirsty for blood. 

With Ren here, there is no question, Hux must succeed. 

Not to mention the sheer amount of personal reasons Hux would have vastly preferred if Ren remains among the living, the Order needs him alive. As the Order’s heir apparent, much like Starkiller, without Ren, the Order’s future would be bleak indeed. 

Gritting his teeth, Hux tightens his grip on Illum and tells himself all the things he already knows:

Starkiller cannot fall. 

He cannot bear any more losses.

The Republic and their precious Jedi have taken everything else from him. 

They cannot have this. 

So it is then with a furious yell, Hux thrust his arms out with his palms turned down towards the earth. Towards the screaming Tor. With a forceful tug with his pointer fingers, Hux hooks his and Ilum’s filo together, so that they are intertwined like tangled strings of a warped harp.

With a terrible heat, his blood becomes magma and his bones stone, fusing themselves to Ilum until together they are both split raw and upon the precipice of death, its cool breath cradling the shell of Hux’s left ear. 

Searing pain blooms in his nerves, in violent vibrations brought upon by the length of Ilum’s filo, that are carried through Hux’s own. The agony of it runs up and down Hux’s spine like a pack of ragging Curs. His bones crack, just as Ilum has cracked. Under his skin, he is boiling, a film of sweat breaking out on his forehead. And just as Ilum bleeds red hot magma, Hux bleeds too; thick red gobs of it dribbling from his nose. 

His stone rings sear themselves to the skin of his fingers, burning through his flesh with an unworldly sort of heat. They dangerously begin to pull themselves down to unite with the marrow of Hux’s bones, threatening to transform Hux where he stands, into stone.

A feral roar is ripped from deep within Hux’s chest and attempts to carry itself high above towering treetops. He almost loses himself to the excruciating pain of being pulled apart, but the echo of Ren fighting for his life somewhere out in the snow is enough for Hux to refocus. 

“THAT IS ENOUGH!” He shouts, and then begins the nasty work of quelling a dying planet, all alone. Hux pulls on Ilum’s filo, tugging it towards himself centering it in his core, commanding the planet to be steady as he is steady. To not succumb to the pressure as he has never succumbed to the pressure. To be firm, composed, and steady.

The hot blood from his nostrils trickle down over his narrow lips and Hux’s hands begin to shake in earnest. He fears losing his grip, when at last he feels Ilum’s filo shift, it’s vibrations slowly lessening as it is blocked by the immovable force of Hux’s own. 

Gradually he feels the rock that was crumbling into the atmosphere return to the planet, grounding itself once more, pieces of mangled stone and durasteel fitting themselves into vacant slots. When the planet has mostly been pieced back together (give or take a crater) through the filo he calls to the magma that runs in rivers deep beneath the crust, to the surface, to seal the cracks and craters. He does this with a strained upward pull of his hands, that he feels through his shoulder. 

Then with heavy breaths, Hux gradually lowers his arms.

He is almost through. 

Hux then brings his arms towards his core once more, where he clasped his hands together and slowly raises his arms towards his sternum. Together Hux’s hands shake, pressing firm into each other as he seals the cracks of the planet, fussing the broken rock together. 

After what feels like an eternity, he feels the planet is stabilizing. Once Ilum is quietly singing once more, Hux untangle their filo and release the connection with a gasp. Blessedly, the sensation of Ilum’s connection gradually grates away and Hux’s rings cease their attempt to meld with the bone of his fingers, as Hux internally becomes whole once more. 

With a weak flick of his narrow wrists, Hux recedes the rock around his calves. When the stone that has been supporting him is gone, the General sinks to his knees before crumbling face forward into the snow. 

He is vaguely aware of the cold sensation of the snow against his face and the oozing of blood from his nose, and how his hands seem to be trembling uncontrollably. In nearly all else he is foggy and dull. Like he’s been stuff full of gaberwool. 

_ Kylo _ his weak mind supplies along with the question  _ where?  _ And then  _ safe? _

He feebly sings to the Tor, sessing his whereabouts on the planet's now calm surface. 

_ Fighting the scavenger girl _ Ilum sings back. 

Through the Tor, Hux hears the Scavenger’s confusion at the fact that the planet has stopped rumbling, in turn, he hears his knight’s befuddled triumph. Their lightsabers begin to clash. 

_ Good _ , Hux thinks foggily and then  _ finish her _ , and  _ be done with it.  _

The last sensation Hux feels before falling unconscious, is the cool press of the ball-chain of his dog tags and his wedding band, against the thin skin of his chest. __

__

_ “Hear the Tor. Hear it sing. Join the song my pebbles.” _

_ -Terris Gerit Magister Dere Hare. _

_ Spoken to her class of first years.  _

_ Concerning the rippling song of the Tor _

  
  


***

_ “On my honor, having been appointed as an officer of the noble Imperial Terris Gerit, I do solemnly swear to defend this great land and its people from all harm, foreign and domestic, and to never betray the integrity of my station. I vow to protect the weak, the broken, and the oppressed, that I will be true in faith and in allegiance as I do this. With grace, I will take up this mantle appointed to me by Terraentha. With dignity, I will wear this mask of stone that has been carved by my hand and remember my fortitude in the face of every enemy. With reverence, I will dawn these rings born of the motherland, and remember my love for my nation and its people. With pride, I will wear this uniform, and remember my comrades who join me in arms. I take up this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. Qui vivat Terrae.” _

_ -Imperial Terris Gerit Oath _

Under a damp sky, Armitage stands barefoot across from his Mom, Saoirse, in a field of drowned lilacs. Rain falls in heavy sheets that smudge the surrounding mountains into blobs of graying green that have been rubbed into a drab gray canvas, presenting every hollow Arkanian promise of new clarity. There’s a horrible sort of damp chill that has Armitage trembling. Beneath his narrow feet is dark mud that is crawling with wriggling worms and tiny streams of runoff. The mud squishes between Armitage’s long toes and makes a squelching sound every time Armitage dares to shift his weight. He’s dressed in plain clothes; nothing more than a sturdy black tunic and matching trousers, both of which have been soaked through. 

All Armitage feels is the embodiment of misery while Saoirse stands across from him, tall and dressed in what appears to be armor.

For once Saoirse’s fiery curls have not been contained by a wooden jaw clip, but rather they flow freely in violent tangles to her mid-back where the wind taunts the ends. From the waist down she’s dressed in thick billowing, deep green and yellow tartan skirts that fall to her thin feet, which were covered in soft-soled leather boots the color of summer tree nuts. To match the skirt, Saoirse wears a high collared woolen tunic that is the same deep mossy green as the skirt. Upon her torso rests a heavy stone chest plate, carved from a polished white stone foreign to these shores. Across the plate is an insignia of a geode fracturing down the middle to reveal a cluster of jade gems that have been embedded into the plate. Her pale hands were bare, save for a pair of white rings that have wrapped themselves around her pointer fingers. Nearby wedged in the earth was a curious mask with a fearsome face carved from the same pale stone as the chest plate and rings. 

She looked like what Armitage imagined goddesses to appear as in the texts of old religions, that Brendol had often called crude and romantic. Even so, Armitage found it strange seeing his Mom outside of her kitchen uniform. Especially when Saoirse was dressed in something so strange.

During the hike from the brick manor to the soggy field, when Armitage had asked, Saoirse had told her son that the ensemble was an old military uniform. One that had been worn by the fiercest fighters in all of the galaxy, so ferocious that even the Jedi had been terrified of them. But these new clothes, this  _ uniform, _ was nothing quite like the familiar white armor of a stormtrooper. 

The skirts themselves were so archaic, they appeared to have been pulled from the deepest depths of the galaxy, somewhere beyond the outer rim territories where the latest trends had not quite reached. Also if this get-up was to be theoretically worn in battle, the singular chest piece and faceplate--neither of which had been crafted from blast-proof durianium Armitage might add--offered very little protection against the threats of combat Armitage had come to understand from his Imperial History Books(Primary levels 1-3). 

But given the way, Saoirse stood, with her narrow shoulder squared and chin up, none of this mattered to her. That despite the uniform’s flaws, she still felt as invincible as a Star destroyer while wearing it. 

And even though they are one in the same, this woman, this  _ soldier _ , who stands across from Armitage is so different from his Mom. 

Armitage’s Mom is all warm smiles, gentle words, and soft hands. Every afternoon she reads to him in the garden, while his Mother acts out all of his favorite parts. She fills his belly with warm foods and indulgent sweets that make his small fingers sticky. She wipes his tears with the corner of her powder-blue apron when Brendol’s harsh words become heavy fists that leave angry bruises all around his alabaster skin. 

Saoirse on the other hand does not seem to be any of these things. She is stone-faced, it’s cut with heavy shadows that ages her until she seems to be much older than Armitage’s Mom. In the low light of the overcast sky, there is a hardness around her jade eyes that has turned them cold and humorless. No, this woman is not Armitage’s Mom, she is a stranger who calls herself Terris Gerit Geranlis Magister Saorise Turn. 

With her mouth in a firm line, Saoirse asks “are you ready for your first lesson little love?” And the pet name sounds wrong from her tongue. 

Nonetheless, Hux rolls back his narrow shoulders and nods. 

With a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, Saoirse steps forwards until she is less than a foot away, so close that Hux would have to crane his head upward to meet her gaze. With both of her own, she reaches for Hux’s right hand, until she is clutching Hux’s it between her own, her palms cool and though this is Saoirse Hux still finds her touch comforting. 

“This is your first lesson then,” Saoirse nods, her voice firm and then suddenly she is breaking the bird-like bones of Hux’s tiny hand. 

Hux instinctively cry out in pain, confused green eyes flying up to lock with Saoirse’s. He finds no sympathy there, only further confirmation this woman is not his Mom. Saoirse had held fast, work-worn fingers pressing firmer into the fracturing bone of Hux’s hand. 

The feeling of it can be equated to the materialized sound of a knife scraping against a ceramic plate. It’s so overwhelming that Hux barely notices when something strange and wiggling from deep within his chest begins reaching outward. Unconsciously Hux lets it--this alive and wiggling  _ thing _ \--go forth until it latches onto something other than this horrible pain, then part of him is relieved to be feeling something other than  _ this _ . That is, until the soaked earth beneath him begins to tremble earnestly, Arkanis harmonizing with his song of pain and betrayal, the sound is loud and thrums deep in his chest where the wiggling thing once lived. Which is altogether scarier than a broken hand. 

The ground begins to roll and rock in a way that makes Armitage feel like a rickety boat left to the mercy of the Northern Arkanian seas. Around him the lilac blooms are dancing, the purple bell petals bobbing their heads to a violent song of anguish. Somewhere behind him, Armitage hears the ground opened up, threatening to swallow everything up like a wicked beast with snarling fangs dripping with poison. All of it is terrifying, and his Mom nor his Mother are anywhere to be found. All Armitage has is  _ Saoirse  _ and she  _ broke his hand.  _

The wind is whipping around him and the rain is falling harder still, and now Arkanis is belting the words to songs that Armitage has never heard before and all Armitage wants to be anywhere but here, where there is nothing but confusion and pain. 

Somewhere to the east, where the cliffs of Heron tower high above the thrashing sea, massive pieces of stone fall into the turbulent waters to be swallowed by the salt. In the west, a chasm opens up and half a farming village is lost. Above, thunder roars and lightning strikes to kill. Beyond him, the mountains begin to walk, steady as soldiers along the horizon line, marching towards the sea.  __

“You must remain composed, my Armie,” Saoirse shouts above the chaos while grounding the pads of her thumbs into Armitage’s small hand. “Loss of control equals loss of safety. You must remain sturdy as stone as the Tor that sings to you, you must remain safe.” 

Armitage stares at her with wide-eyed watering green eyes, unknowingly singing songs of confusion and betrayal being sung in equal measure, until they vibrate loudly into the ground to be echoed back by the planet along with the tethering of what he’d come to know as their filo. Small war wages within Armitage’s tiny heart, a feral part of him had wanted to pull away from the source of hurt while another wanted to crawl into the very arms that had once sheltered him from every storm, pleading for sanctuary. 

“Momma stop it hurts,” Armitage hears himself whimper pathetically.

“Stop quaking and I will my little love,” Saoirse bargains. 

“I dunno  _ how _ Momma!” Armitage cries. As if manifested by the sound (it was) a large crack appears near his right foot, sending a clump of lilacs into the earth, this makes Hux panic even more so. 

The sight of the crack so close to her son’s little foot, makes Saoirse drop Armitage’s hand. In one smooth motion, she falls to her knees before her son and those soft hands fly up to cradle Armitage’s leaking face between her palms forcing him to look at her. At this moment Saoirse vanishes and Mom is left in her place. With gentle strokes of her thumbs, she is whipping Armitage’s tears away. 

“Breath with me my Armie,” his Mom commands softly, before beginning to breathe slowly in counts of three. Armitage tries to mimic her breaths but keeps choking on his sobs. 

She takes Armitage’s uninjured hand and presses the small palm against the curve of her lips. “Breath little love,” his Mom coos against his soaked skin, continuing to take deep breaths, slow and steady, and in counts of three. Her breath is warm and soft, each puff of air soothing all that wrong in the world.

Eventually, Armitage can catch his breath enough to be able to mimic her, wet and shaky at first. Then slowly, they begin to match in their breaths, Hux calming down. Inturn as he regains control of his emotions, the ground beneath him ceases trembling and the mountains have stopped marching and the wiggling thing lives in him once more and Arkanis it silent. The sky still rages on. 

Armitage’s Mom gathers her son into her arms, shifting until she is properly seated on the wet earth with the small ginger boy in her lap. Hux burrows his face into her neck and for a few moments, the pair of them sit silent. But then Saoirse reappears, though she sounds different, the softness of her voice gives away that there is Momma underneath that stone. 

“My darling, what we are is powerful, and people have feared that power and we were killed for it.” she murmurs, a hand moving smoothly down his soaked red curls. “You must conceal yourself else there are people who would kill you...you must live my little love...you must always remain composed...never reach for the Tor driven by your emotion alone. Never. Always remain composed. Promise you will stay safe.”

“I will Momma,” Armitage promises into his Mom’s neck. And years later, after all of this and more has come to pass, while he lays awake in his narrow academy bunk, Hux will suddenly understand why Saorise broke Armitage’s hand during a storm. 

  
  


_ “...As many of you may have heard through the murmurs of the system, the quaint farming planet Narathorana was attacked by a faction of masked soldiers wielding blasters and the very ground beneath their feet. In the skirmish, a great crater was carved beneath the stone streets of Narathorana’s capital, Jija, and the entire city was dragged down to the planet's core where it presumably burned up in the flames.  _

_ Now my confidants, my wise fellow delegates of the Senate, you know I've never been quick to assume, but based upon Jedi Knight Fea’s travels we know that Terraentha’s Imperial Terris Gerits are known for their elaborate masks made of stone that is carved into the grueling shape of grotesque faces and the Terrae’s particular power in regards to the earth...the Tor if you will. If that is not enough, there is also Terraentha’s Terris Gerit Princeps Magnus own assumption of responsibility for the entire affair, and I quote ‘the loathsome people of Narathorana deserved their capital’s demise...they’ve stolen the teeth of our babes for far too long...now nevermore, as their cesspool of a city burns in the interior of the planet which birthed them. Qui vivat Terrae.”  _

_ So based on these accounts and the events that have transpired on Narathorana, the Terrae have proven themselves dangerous. I implore my fellow delegates of this noblest Republic Senate to consider moving to take action against these nefarious factions of this most malicious people, else I fear Jija will not be the last sunken city.” _

_ -Senator Kitana Moore, of Naboo _

_ Spoken to the Second Republic Senate _

_ Concerning the Tragedy of Jija _

  
  


***

_ “Long ago, long before the Terris Gerit Premis moved the mountain Junova, the Terrae lived deep beneath the earth as beings composed of multicolored-crystallized stones fused in couples by golden ore. In the dark of the bedrock of Terraentha there was blissful peace...but then came the first great shake.  _

_ The Tor trembled so violently, that the Terrae split into halves...Desperate to get back to their stonemates the Terrae scrambled around in the dark loam, searching ceaselessly for their dilectus, but the dark proved to be disorienting and the quake shook some to the other side of the planet...Taking pity on her wriggling and weeping children, Stone Mother Hoa, guided them with gentle hands to the surface...In the glittering sun of Terraentha, the Terrae’s golden heads cooled to a deep red and they were stripped of their stone skins; leaving them covered in soft tissue and bone everywhere but their smiles...now guided in the light the Terrae were able to freely search for their stonemates.” _

_ -Lorist Martha Hemp  _

When Hux opens his eyes it is not on the frigid surface of a dead planet but in bed with Kylo. 

And yes, here he is  _ Kylo. _

Just as Hux is  _ Tidge _ . 

_ Kylo _ is naked and warm, the heat radiating off of his skin with the intensity of a nuclear reactor. They lay facing one another with their bare chest press flushed together, Tidge belatedly becoming aware that he is naked as well, and their heads cushioned by plush pillows. Kylo is smiling at Tidge in that shy way he does, all crooked teeth and dimples as deep as the golden canyons of Kiethera. One of his husband’s massive hands is rubbing nonsense patterns over Tidge's heart, while the other is cradling his fiery head where the pad of his thumb traces the pale shell of his ear. The edges of Kylo’s dark curls are tinted a nutty brown by pale sunlight that filters in through a pair of open bay windows that lay beyond the man’s board shoulders. The lazy wind sends their opaque curtains fluttering, the salty smell of sea air wafers in along with the sweet-smelling promise of an incoming storm. Tidge hopes it rains. Strangely he’s missed the rain while he’s been away, just as he has missed the roaring seas. 

Kylo leans down and briefly, replaces his hand with his mouth, pressing a dry kiss to Tidge’s sternum. When Kylo raises his head he leaves behind a warm burn in the shape of his lush lips branded into Tidge’s skin, a kiss he rubs into the other man’s heart with his hand once more. 

Excluding the places where Kylo’s hands lay, Tidge can’t feel his body. There is just a sort of blissful nothingness of a half existence. He imagines this bodily quiet is what it’s like for those who’ve never heard the planets sing or the invisible pull of the Force. And though some still conscious part of him that may live beyond this room understands logically that he should be concerned, Tidge doesn’t find this site focused paralysis distressing. There is no dread in his heart, just an easy sense of contentment.

_ I want to kiss him  _ Tidge thinks. 

As if reading his mind, which he has done many times before, Kylo leans forward to close the remaining distance between them. The larger man presses a soft kiss against the thin curve of Tidge’s mouth, then in a breath shifts their lips so they slot more perfectly. The kiss draws a pair of pleased sighs from the pair, and Tidge feels his eyes flutter shut. 

The room melts away until all that is left is the pressure of Kylo’s lips against his, and even then that vanishes too, as Tidge is pulled back into reality, where he becomes Hux once more.

When Hux opens his eyes, he is met with chaos. 

Ever so slowly the gridlocked ceiling of the  _ Finalizer’s  _ medical bay comes into focus. Then just as soon as they became clear, the white lights and gray ceiling panels blur together. Below him, Hux is vaguely aware of the sturdy plastasteel gurney, which spirits him away down the catacombs of the  _ Finalizer’s  _ Medical wing. He vaguely becomes aware of the medical staff that runs alongside him and his strange ship in this sea of the aftermath. Among the team of gray scrubs is, surprisingly, Kylo Ren.

He stands at Hux’s top right covered in blood and tattered clothes and isn’t looking at Hux. Rather Ren focused on ahead with a long arm stretched out in front of him, his wrist flicking ever so often, the motion sharp and precise and accompanied by the occasional a peculiar thumping noise. It reminds Hux of the way Ren hacks through enemies in battle, cutting down anyone who stands in his way. Days ago that saber had been trained on him, and Hux groggily wonders when he’d become the enemy. He wants to ask the other man, but his voice fails him.

_ Kylo,  _ he thinks weakly.

And it’s enough because soon Ren’s eyes are on him. The worry Hux finds there is enough to soothe Hux’s heart, but there’s so much still unspoken between them and even in the inept state Hux knows this. Which is stupid because Hux is pretty sure he’s dying. Or close to it.

_ Kylo,  _ Hux thinks again, trying to pour everything he’s ever felt into a name. 

Kylo says nothing, turns away, and starts flicking his wrist more erratically. Hux is almost sure the gurney starts moving faster as well. 

The round face of a nurse suddenly floods his vision, she shines a bright flashlight into Hux’s eyes, undoubtedly checking his visual response. Then just as quickly as the light appeared, it disappeared leaving dancing colored spots in its wake. Hux vaguely feels the cool sensation of the nurse’s dainty fingers wrapping around one of his hands, Hux for the life of him can’t figure out which. Then comes her clear commands to “squeeze for me sir,” but Hux is unable to comply. He becomes aware of the pounding of his heart and that the air has become thinner or his lungs have holes in them, either way, he can’t breathe. 

Colored spots start swarming, his vision turns dark and begins to tunnel until he feels himself drifting away, his body becoming weightless as if the  _ Finalizer’s  _ gravity stabilizers decided to malfunction. Hux can hear the nurse’s soft calls for him to stay with her, but falling away is so much easier. 

“He’s coding! Be ready to intubate!” Someone to his left says.

Then to his right, another screams, above a slowing beeping sound, “we need a crash cart!” 

Above it all is a desperate “Tidge!” and then the medical bay fades from Hux’s vision. This time there is no dream to greet him, only darkness, then suddenly that is gone too. 

The steady beep of machinery rouses Hux to consciousness once again and Ren is no longer running beside him. Instead, he is perched in a chair positioned at Hux’s bedside. His elbows rest heavily on his knees, his long fingers are steepled, and his beloved mask carefully nestled between Hux’s blanket-covered feet. Ren remains draped in all of his black robe fineries, which are covered in dried blood. Upon his pale face, there’s a fresh scar that carves an angry arch over the right eye, over the cheekbone, and down to his chin. Ren stares intently at Hux. His deep brown eyes hold an odd sort of intensity that Hux hasn’t seen directed towards himself in ages, even during the worst of this year. Hux recognizes it as distrust, and it makes the air thick with an uncomfortable tension. 

Even so, Hux is still overcome with relief at the sight of his husband. An acute understanding of Ren being alive washes over him in warm waves. Everything else can come after. Hux attempts to sit up, desperate to touch the other man, to feel him solid and whole under his own hands.

He wants to hold Ren’s hand. 

To kiss him.

To hug him.

To shake him senseless for being so foolish as to risk his safety, all to chase somebody as worthless as The Scavenger through the snow, as Ilum crumbled.

Anything.

Anything at all.

Hux just needs to touch his husband. To reassure himself that Ren’s all there, not in pieces on that hellscape of a planet, or aboard an ancient freighter on his way to reunite with his rebel parents. 

But his entire body feels too heavy. Like it's being weighed down by the gravity of a thousand planets, calling him to sink further into the rough sheets of his hospital bed. Nonetheless, he tries to sit up, arms shaking violently from the strain of the normally simple activity. Still weakened by the events that occurred on Starkiller, Hux fails to get upright. This inability to complete such a mundane task leaves a rotten taste in his mouth, it settles on his tongue and contorts his features into what Hux is sure to be nothing short of unadulterated disgust. Defeated by his injured body’s limits, Hux bitterly flops back against the thin pillows of his hospital bed.

The fact that through all of his struggle, Ren made no moves to help him, does not go unnoticed. 

“You’re alive I see,” Hux says evenly, eyes staring intently at the ceiling. 

“I killed the traitor,” Ren offers and then adds “The Scavenger got away.”

“Pity,” Hux says bitterly.

“Starkiller survived,” Ren says next, that heavy gaze still trained on Hux who in turn is still burning holes into the ceiling of the  _ Finalizer’s  _ medbay.

In response to Ren, Hux makes what he hopes to be a pleasantly surprising sort of noise and then for good measure says, “a feat I supposed that should be accredited to you and your mysticisms.” 

Ren shakes his head and mutters, “no...the Force had nothing to do with this...but the base somehow still survived a critical hit to its oscillator.” 

Hux shifts his gaze from the ceiling to catch Ren’s eyes. The heaviness of the other man’s gaze is leveling and would have sent a lesser man’s heart racing and palms sweating. But long ago, in a wet field of wildflowers and through a broken hand, Hux was taught the essentialism of composure in all circumstances. He will not be broken, even by a man who knows him more intimately than any other ever will. 

“A credit to the Order’s finest weaponeers then.” He says resolutely, not breaking eye contact.

“What happened to your fingers?” Ren quires, though the question reads more akane to an interrogation. 

Hux shifts his gaze down to his left hand to assess his fingers, and he sees the distinct shape of his Terris Gerit ring burned into his flesh, plainly branding him for what he is. Hux wills himself not to react. He prays to Mother Hoa that his rings haven’t been thrust out of the airlock, that if Ren has miraculously unearthed the truth after all this time, Hux will not be immediately cut down by his husband’s fickle saber.

With what Hux hopes are bland eyes, he shifts his gaze to look at Ren. “Haven’t the foggiest,” he says cooly. 

Ren frowns at him, it borderlines a degree of disgust that makes Hux’s stomach curdle. Ren slowly un-steepled his fingers to allow one hand to rummage in the breast pocket of his stained cloak, Hux watches him with careful eyes. Ren eventually pulls out Hux’s Terris Gerit rings and throws them into Hux’s lap. 

“They found those on you when your body was recovered,” Ren mutters bitterly, “they were practically seared into your flesh, the nurse couldn’t saw through them, the surgeon had to pry them away...some of your skin came with them.”

Hux makes no move for the rings.

He doesn’t let the pleasure at their recovery be made plain by his face. Pretends to be oblivious, even though their marks have sunk themselves into his skin and has torn away pieces of his flesh. 

“You’ve been keeping secrets from me,” Ren says and then as an afterthought, “and from the Supreme Leader.” Still leveling Hux with that frown on his face, studying him and leaning in closer as if the distance will reveal the secrets in question. 

And oh terrible Tor there are secrets.

Secrets Hux wants to share with Ren.

But then if Ren knows, so will Snoke.

And then Hux will be dead. 

Secrets have kept Hux safe thus far, and he’ll be damned if he goes out because he was careless enough to disclose his lineage to his husband, who has a worm in his ear continuously listening. 

So Hux swallows thickly and says “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Why didn’t Ilum collapse?” Ren asks. 

“I don't know,” Hux scoffs, “my secondary specialization at the academy was medicine, not weaponeering, Ren. ”

“Liar,” Ren seethes rising from his chair, he jabs a finger in Hux’s face. “You do know, and you know engineering had nothing to do with it, what are you keeping from me?!” he spits. 

“Get your hand out of my face.” Hux musters up enough strength to swat the offending finger out of his face. “I’ve no secrets from you, I’ve shared everything,” he lies through his teeth.

“No! No! No! NO!” Ren releases a beastly sort of roar. With a series of great sweeping motions, he heaves the chair up and over his head, turning to send it careening to the other end of the room, where it crashes against the wall. He then returns his attention to Hux, bending in half to loom over the thinner man with both of his paws braced against either side of Hux’s bed rails.

From this close Hux can make out the swimming browns that compose Ren’s eyes; every shade of amber, gold, and soil swirling into a melting pool, like a pair of unsettled planets littered with volcanoes waiting to burst. 

“You’ve been keeping secrets, General Hux,” he spits into Hux’s face, “What are those stone rings? Why didn’t Ilum implode? What were you doing on the fucking surface half-buried in the snow, with your heart stopped? What aren’t you telling me?”

“I have no secrets from you, nor the Order.” Hux maintains keeping his eyes locked with Ren’s own.

“Yes you do and you will tell me?” 

“Well if you’re so sure of your baseless assumption, why don’t you come and take it from my head with your grubby prying fingers like I’m some Republic scum,” Hux growls, “as of late you’ve held no qualms for doing so.” 

Ren grows quiet at this, eyes darting away from Hux to look at a spot on the bedsheet. Then Ren lets go of the bed rails, rising to stand at his full height, his gazing shifting to glare at the durasteel floor with clumsy fingers balled into terrible fists. He is visibly shaking with frustrated fury, and for a moment Hux fears that Ren will rise to Hux’s challenge. That he’ll pull every secret from the soft tissue of Hux’s brian, until all that's left of the General is a drooling mess. 

He does none of that.

Just allows a charged silence to build between them. 

In this silence the fight slowly leaves Hux and is replaced once again with a longing for Ren’s touch, to take one of those fists and gently uncurl the twisted fingers until they slotted perfectly with Hux’s own. A pitifully desperate need to tether himself to something solid while he is here in the vacuum of space aboard his star destroyer, as it travels towards uncertainty. Part of him is sick with this need, the other is disgusted as to how he’s grown so dependent on the touch of another person to ground himself when all it used to take was a cup of caf and his rings resting in his pocket. Even with the rings now, sitting heavy in his lap, it is not enough. Hux desperately needs Ren holding his hand in a ginger cradle of his fingers. Like Ren used to, when he thought Hux to be something precious, something to be cared for. Now Ren won’t even look at him. 

Hux stamps down his desire, keeping his hand at his side. Ren has made it plain that the action would not be welcomed and Hux can’t help but wonder how they got here. 

Not very long ago, after the growing pains of their initial meetings, they had once had been a united, unstoppable force of vicious strategy and the snarling teeth of beasts starved for conquest, and the power that was coupled with it. Unshakable in their faith in one another, as well as the cause of the Order. Then came Snokes’ quest for Skywalker as well as the insurmountable losses that followed. 

Oh, terrible Tor, how quickly everything had fallen apart after that first lost, that first year. How easily in the wake of defeat the pair of them had reverted to creatures of cruelty, with venomous words spat through the points of their teeth. How their fondness, their tenderness, their  _ love, _ had bred into undisguisable contempt in the thick of all this. 

How all of this had led to the Hux lying helplessly in this hospital bed, locking eyes with his beloved whose gaze only holds disgust and distrust.

Hux may know how to repair a planet and even broken bones, but in the face of his fracturing marriage, he is at a loss. 

“The Supreme Leader calls me away, I am to complete my training,” Ren says eventually, breaking the silence, his voice hollow. 

“Oh,” Hux says, “I see.” 

He watches as Ren dawns the helmet once more and remembers a time not long ago Hux had assisted him with the activity, sealing the action with a kiss pressed into the vents over the mouth. 

Once upon a time goodbye, kisses had been common between them. They were exchanged every day before Hux left for bridge duty and before Kylo went to tend his Knights. That had been before this horrible angry year full of losses and hostility, now Hux can’t remember when he kissed his husband last.

“So this is goodbye is it?” Hux swallows. 

Ren looks down at him through dead eyes. “For now, yes,” He says through the ventilation of the mask. He remains at Hux’s bedside for a few breaths, before stalking out of the General’s hospital room, his robes billowing behind him like a pair of wings. 

Hux desperately wants to call him back to him, back to his bedside. He wants to ask to hold Ren’s hand. To ask Ren to crawl into bed with him and just stay. He wants his fucking goodbye kiss. 

But he doesn’t know how to ask for these things anymore.

Hux doesn’t know how to ask his husband for a goodbye kiss. 

He feels his heartbreaking too, and despite popular speculation, it’s not made of stone, so Hux has no idea how to fix it.

_ “As a Jedi Knight’s sole duty is to preserve the goodness of the galaxy through vanquishing the dark, by only means true benevolent uses of the Force that are achieved when a disciple reaches true enlightenment. To accomplish this, a Jedi must sever all attachments and individual bonds held, such as familiar and romantic love. These sorts of emotional attachments tend to provoke too much passion within an individual, and as it is written, passion is an all too direct path to the seductive dark side.” _

_ -The Jedi Enchiridion: 4th Edition. _

***

_ “Beware the trembling child. Mother Hoa adores her pebbles, and their songs will be heard.” _

_ -Lorist Temperance Shaw  _

Armitage was four when he first sang to the Tor.

It had been only a handful of days after his birthday when Armitage had taken to the back garden of Brendol’s estate with his kite. The toy itself had been a fragile blue and green thing with a tail longer than he was tall and Armitage had adored it instantly. In the early hours of the afternoon the wind current had been good, the omnipresent drizzle of Arkanian rain had been favorably light, and Armitage for once had felt content rather than lonely. Unlike the board game he’d gotten his previous birthday, a kite was meant for one player.

All had been well that afternoon until the wind died suddenly and his kite had gotten lodged in the wild branches of the hedge work that grew along the perimeter of the garden. The tail of the thing had gotten tangled in the thickets of the ting, along with the runner string. He’d spent nearly an hour trying to free his new toy, getting increasingly frustrated. 

The Tor, having heard his body's song of aggravation, attempted to harmonize with small localized tremors and quakes. This went on until, with tears in his eyes, Armitage had given up on the kite and in anguish stomped his tiny foot to the earth, consequently creating a meter long crack in the cobblestone path of the garden. 

This was how his Mother found him: sobbing in confusion at the cracked earth beneath his feet and still agitated about the current situation involving his kite. She’d set the crate of ruby Julips she’d been carrying to plant in the garden, and bent down to gather her weeping son in her sturdy arms. Armitage had buried himself in the warmth of those arms, sobbing earnestly into her dress. Armitage’s Mother had rocked him gently until tiny Armitage gradually dissolved into soft hiccups and the earth no longer shook beneath him. 

His Mother had then pulled him away from her chest. She’d produced a small hanker-chief from her breast pocket and pressed it against his small nose, the fabric soft and smelling faintly of flowers. “Blow,” she’d commanded kindly and Armitage complied, nose producing a grotesque noise, ruining the apron until the next round of wash. She then wiped away the remainder of his tears with her soft hands, cooing at him gently. 

She’d cast her gaze down to the ground and said, “quite the mess you’ve made my dear.” She then shifted the sole of her foot, and something miraculous happened. Armitage watched with rapped fascination as the cracks he’d created in the earth, slowly healed themselves under his Mother’s hand. The cobblestone stitching itself back together with every shift of the stone, the pathway becoming whole again. 

When it was all said and done, all Armitage could do was stare wide-eyed at his Mother. “Mother what was that!? The Force?” he’d asked in wonderment. 

She’d chuckled and shook her head, the motion freeing a few stray ginger curls from her hair clip. “No my darling...something old...something  _ better _ ...more powerful, it is the Tor.”

Young Armitage’s face scrunched up, little nose wrinkling with confusion. “What’s the Tor?” He’d asked, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand. 

“The ground, the rock, the soil, the earth...the planet itself...all gifts are given to us, the Terrae, by loving Mother Hoa” Armitage's Mother explained, voice filled with what Armitage would come to know as reverence. “And as a Terrae, like all who came before you, have the gift to sing to the earth, to command it to move beneath at your will...would you like to learn how to harmonize with the earth my darling?” 

While still perched on his Mother’s lap, Armitage had nodded eagerly, sporting a watery jade green smile.

_ “Take note that younglings will be wary of abandoning their worldly attachments for high purposes achieved through the Force, this is the way of children. However, if you encounter a particularly resistant Padawan-to-be, do not hesitate to use other methods of  _ persuasion _ , and remember all that you do is for the good of the galaxy.”  _

_ -Jedi Seeker Handbook.  _

***

_ “...Hoa was born alone from deep within the cold dark of the soil of the Great Nothing. Finding herself famished, Hoa began to eat through the beautiful dark in an act of great devouring. She consumed all in her path with great abandon; soil disappeared down her gaping maw, a wet place plagued with an inescapable famine, in massive clumps. Hoa consumed until her hunger was satisfied...after Hoa’s last bite of the earth, her teeth clacked together, and then suddenly there was no more nothingness, no more darkness…there was light...” _

_ -Lorist Jean Kithara _

Much to Chief Medical Officer Runa's dismay and displeasure, Hux’s blood pressure is skyrocketing at an alarming rate and he is refusing to give up his cigs. Runa will have to pry the little bastards out of Hux’s cold dead hands and honestly at the rate he’s putting away packs, she just might, which is slightly worrisome because he’s seen the elderly women subdue enough patients twice her size to know she’d put up a valiant fight against his seal’s training. Even so, it’d be worth the risk of receiving Runa’s right hook to keep his cigs, Hux’ll need at least a pack of those sweet-tasting little bastards to keep his head level enough to get him through the days ahead; especially this particular day. 

After having spent months away handling a series of Resistance driven border skirmishes on the Order’s western crescent, the  _ Finalizer, _ and her crew had just received approval from the other members of High Command to return to Starkiller. While many of her crew had been relieved, General Hux couldn’t have been warier.

In preceding correspondence with the lead weaponeers of the project, it had been made known to the General of several complications regarding the stability of the oscillator which had been built within the planet’s core. The machinery was compromised so thoroughly, that any clumsy strike from a drunken X-wing pilot would have been enough to send the entire planet into a state of distress that would cause the entire thing to become apocalyptic. 

The conversations with High Command and Starkiller’s lead weaponeers and terraformers that followed this particular revelation were less than lucrative and unfortunately, they were not able to come to a solution to the problem before Hux had been called away to the front. 

This led to many disaster scenarios to run amuck through the General’s already cluttered brain, well spontaneously making room in the recesses of his skull for war statistics and general battle strategy. Which all, in turn, led to Hux picking up several habits he’d managed to kick during his academy days, such as nibbling at his cuticles until his fingers bled and Hux was forced to hide the despicable sign of weakness under his gloves, as well as plowing through packs upon packs of shitty canteen cigs a cycle. 

Blessedly, during a previous holo-com meeting, it was configured over cooling cups of caf that to help alleviate some of the systematic stress on the machine, that planet’s interior would have to be cooled. A team of weaponeers concluded that to accomplish this a series of seismic charges would be buried deep into the planet’s crust, and once they were triggered, the series of explosives would create several simple craters. Then, ideally, some of the heat of the planet's inner core would escape, consequently relieving the pressure, cooling the core, and in turn hopefully preserving the oscillator for years to come.

However, if this particular maneuver fails it could lead to any number of disasters, where the best-case scenario would be setting back the entire project a year and the worst being an obliterated planet whose life loss, would put the tragedy of Alderaan to shame. It’d taken many sleepless rest cycles of pouring over presented data for Hux to eventually sign off on the procedure that would essentially either make or break the First Order. 

So needless to say, Hux is overcome with a great sense of foreboding when the  _ Finalizer _ dropped out of lightspeed and Ilum’s snowy surface came into the bridge’s viewpoint. From above its surface Hux’s mind--ever the cruel mistress--could easily picture Ilum fracturing, breaking like a toppling bobble from a Life Day tree. 

He could see with complete clarity; the blinding vividity of red jagged cracks running along the white surface, how the planet would sink inwards for a breath before bursting violently, warped stone and durasteel sailing through the stars at catastrophic speeds, and the entire crew of the  _ Finalizer  _ watching with catatonic eyes as they were torn apart by the shrapnel of a hallowed planet. 

His near-empty stomach turned with the turmoil, chunks of potential agonizing life loss turning among the half-digested contents of his bland lunch. Not that Hux’s face would have ever betrayed this, his fear-driven by theoretical failure and the collateral damage of those failures. Despite the tragedy riddle scenarios running across the back of his eyelids like a horrible holo-film marathon, Hux stares ahead. His expression remains blank, complete nondescript save for the ever-present crease between his brows and the dark circles collected under his calcite green eyes. 

In their most recent meeting, it had been decided that upon his return Hux would be brought to the planet side to oversee the scheduled demolition, to help finalize and sign off on any potential last-minute changes. Hux was eager to get the whole thing over with. So almost immediately after returning to orbit Hux boarded a shuttle along with a small landing crew. 

The pilot had easily carried them through dead space. The shuttle had only begun to shutter when they slowly started to break through the layers of Ilum’s atmosphere, the purple fires of ozone had danced along with the craft’s transparisteel viewpoints similar to the colored winds of Humianna. The ship’s shaking had dissipated once they were through the stratosphere, transitioning into Ilum’s troposphere. They were forced to navigate a field of heavy gray storm clouds before finally resting gently on a snowy landing field located a handful of meters from the imposing gray structure of the base. 

With the shuttle landed safely, the pilot cut the engines and opened the bay doors to lower the gangplank. Hux rose from his chair calmly, smoothing the wrinkles in his uniform tunic left by the shuttles seatbelts, before leading the way to the gangplank. Hux buttoned his greatcoat as he walked with precise steps, heels clicking against the durasteel floor.

Once they breached the passenger hold and began descending the gangplank, the landing crew was immediately assaulted by the turbulent winds of Ilum’s winters. Hux nearly lost his cap to a particularly violent gust of frigid air that had almost knocked the headpiece off his gel plastered head. He found himself forced to continue the rest of the way down the gangplank with one hand securing the cap to his head, else risk losing it to the planet’s wind currents. 

The chill of the air is all sharp edges, cutting into the soft flesh of his lungs like razors bringing his body to a shocking state momentarily before Hux pressed on. Dense snowflakes began accumulating, they were pretty in their delicate dance down from the heavens. Thus far it is proving to be a normal day as far as they go on the borderline hostile planet of Ilum.

When the soles of Hux’s jackboots had hit the surface of the planet, his confident steps stuttered as he was overcome with a sensation he had almost forgotten in his months away in space skimming the stars. 

The Tor.

He had nearly forgotten the Tor.

The song of the earth. 

The sensation of thrumming threads of intertwining filo strumming through every fiber of the stone, soil, crystal, and everything in between. All at once, Hux can feel the shifting of stone as it crumbles down from the mountainsides. The flow of the rivers of magma running beneath the surface. The shifting of the massive tectonic plates of the planet, creating dancing quakes along Ilum’s fault lines. All of it sings to him through the Tor in an all familiar song that traveled through his body starting with his feet, then through his core, and finally to the tips of his lithe fingers were sparks of power tingle. 

How had Hux almost forgotten the Tor?

Having spent much of his adolescence cruising the vacuum of space in rusting star destroyers among the refugees left behind in the Empire’s collapse, Hux has always held a fondness for space travel. However, it could never compare to the sensation of being grounded by the Tor, after having been off-planet for so long. His heart is simultaneously heavier as well as lighter in the wake of all music beneath his feet, soaring crescendos of shifting stone. If Hux had been a different man, it would have been an overwhelming shock to the system the same way dunking his head in a bucket of ice water would have been. But Hux’s Mothers taught him well, so it only takes three breaths for Hux to recenter himself. 

As Hux stood there breathing on the surface of Ilum a great tension that had wracked his entire body, lessened a little, reminding Hux just how much he had missed hearing the song of the earth. 

Mother Hoa how he had missed the Tor.

And yet this reunion with the Tor is bittersweet. Ilum sings a sad song full of the sort of despair that threatens to overturn Hux’s composure, and here he is forcibly reminded of the atrocities he has allowed to be done unto the earth. 

During the project’s earliest days, the planet had reached out to him through the Tor, instantaneously and eagerly intertwining their filo together in a greeting of a merry song. Ilum had been happy to hear him, after having been alone for so long. If there was something Hux had understood acutely, it was loneliness. So he had welcomed the connection, and subtlety echoed the greeting through a well-placed tug along a minor fault line. His preliminary weeks had gifted him with an easy relationship with the planet, Hux only having to quell three minor quakes. 

However, not long after the first destructive blasts to Ilum’s surface, things began to fall apart. After the opening demolition, a massive chasm was blown into Ilum’s southern sphere, leaving the planet to bleed hot magma into its frozen oceans. Ilum’s song became a sharp thing full of insurmountable pain, Hux imagined it comparably to the sensation of receiving a blaster shot that never properly cauterized. Through their intertwined filo, the planet cried out for Hux’s help, only to be harshly denied by the severing of their connection. To add insult to injury, Hux commanded for a secondary blow to be dealt with. 

With each of the Order’s indiscretions against it, Ilum’s song changed drastically. It shifted in intense waves of emotions, all of which were easily heard by Hux through the Tor. As the years passed on, Ilum flowed effortlessly from hurt to confusion, to betrayal, and finally to fury. 

And with that fury, Ilum began to fight back, waging war on the parasites populating its surface. First, the planet sent massive quakes that Hux had to quell, else they threatened to decimate entire sectors of the base. Then Ilum pushed wicked heat through the weakest points of its crust, instigating a previously dormant volcano to erupt, and successfully coating the mountainside in wicked lava that Hux had to divert to massive lakes and seas to cool. Then there were the ragging shifts of the planet’s main tectonic plates that created great canyons in the surface, that Hux had to knit back together. 

Yes, Ilum worked hard to purge the virus from its surface, but Hux received each attack with grace and redirected them swiftly, all for the sake of the blasphemous mangling the earth with durasteel. 

Each time Hux was forced to wrestle the entire planet into submission, to smother it until it sang nothing but the haunting song of inevitable death through the Tor, it took a toll on his filo. It was exhausting work and he took no pleasure from it, but it had to be done. 

Though as the last of the Terrae, Hux finds the whole process of mutilating Ilum completely sacrilegious, Starkiller must be completed and the Republic must fall. He can only pray that Mother Hoa will forgive him for the indiscretions that he’s carried out as means for his survival. That even, with the blood of the earth staining his hands, the hours Hux spent singing mourning songs (while standing barefoot in the snow, with the agate beads of sorrow draped about his ankles) through the Tor each evening he’s planetside, will be enough to grant him eternal rest when he is returned to the earth once more.

He hopes it will be enough because, after this shit show, Hux could use a fucking nap. 

On this day Ilum sings a hollow-sounding song, ringing with a keen sort of furious sorrow. It reverberates up from the soles of his feet to the cage of Hux’s chest, leaving him heartbroken as well as on high alert. With this Hux is forced to inhale a deep and steadying breath before he can properly greet the lead weaponeer that’s been forced to venture out into the weather to receive their landing party. 

“General,” Doctor Fannell offers Hux a sharp salute before glancing behind him and saying with a shallow bow of her head, “Lord Ren it is an honor to host the Master of the Knights of Ren and the Supreme Leader’s heir apparent.” 

Hux forced his face to resist falling into a natural scowl at the acknowledgment of his co-commander. It doesn’t work as well as he’d wished, the corners of his mouth still find themselves turning downward ever so slightly, just enough to convey his absolute misery of being subjected to the man’s presence every day. He carefully flexes his fingers, the leather of his gloves creaking around the appendages as he presses the nails into his palm until they leave a biting sensation against his leather-covered skin (another habit Hux has never quite been able to kick). 

He had been so absorbed with the sudden reconnection with the Tor he’d nearly forgotten the other man was there, trailing behind him like an unwanted shadow. Now that Hux had become conscious of Kylo Ren, he forcibly reminded just how loud Kylo Ren can be. Even when the man is making the obvious effort to quiet, ever in tune to static he calls a life song that is produced by the Force, Ren still is always the loudest person in the vicinity. He always walks with the same sort of lumbering gait that a massive Hernomal Hound would, snarling at anything that dares to block his path. It makes his presence in the Tor easily distinguishable, which Hux finds incredibly annoying. 

Ren did not acknowledge Fannell’s greeting, offering the weaponeer nothing more than the blank stare of the lifeless eyes of that bucket Ren insists on wearing. 

Oh how Hux,  _ loathes  _ that accursed thing. 

In the early days, when their co-commandership had been a wholly uncomplicated fledgling thing, Ren had explained to him that the helmets are worn by the Knights of Ren, as some symbolic homage for the fallen Sith Lord Vadar. He’d explained, while they gazed down through the bridge’s viewpoint at the then still bare land of Ilum, that the blankness of the mask’s face is meant to mock the Jedi who frown upon emotional outburst and attachment, while the Sith thrived on it.

Hux had so badly wanted to tell Ren that Lord Vadar’s iconic image was appropriated from The Terris Gerit of Terraentha, now lost. That after reciting an oath, which was not dissimilar to the First Order’s Galactic Navy’s own, the soldiers of Terraentha wore these masks with the greatest of honor before they’d been slaughtered in the name of the Force. Wanted to describe the knight in perfect detail, the fine thing made of white marble Hux’s Mom had owned. He wanted to recount for Ren, in perfect clarity, the curves of the fearsome expression painstakingly carved by a much younger Saoirse into its smoothed surface.

It was a rite of passage for all young Terris Gerit to carve their masks from the earth that birthed them, their homeworld, with the helping hands of their loved ones. A rite Hux will never have the privilege of completing, for Arkanis is the New Republic’s and his Mothers are dead; Maratelle and Saoirse both drowned in the northern seas beneath the peaks of Kel by Skywalker’s hand, leaving Hux alone. Crowing him as Armitage Hux Terris Gerit Novissimis. 

He wanted to explain with the force of unchecked fury he typically never allowed himself, that the Knights of Ren and the Sith had completely missed the point of the mask. It wasn’t meant to hide feelings behind blank durasteel, it was meant to inspire fear in enemies through the contortion of the stone into expressions reflective of the fearlessness of the soldier’s heart. 

He’d wanted to tell Ren all of this while burying the man in a landside of his fury. 

But instead in a scornful tone, Hux told Ren it was childish to hide behind the safety of a mask. Ren in turn had called him a senseless military brat, before stalking off to destroy something vitally important to the function of Hux’s ship. 

Fannell to her credit had taken Ren’s intimidation tactic in stride and began leading them to the base while debriefing Hux on the Starkiller’s promising progress and the logistics of the demolition that was to occur later that day. Ren trails behind the pair of them, his heaving footsteps sending waves through the Tor similar to a series of small quakes. Hux resists the urge to quell them.

Hux doesn’t even understand why Ren was there in the first place. Never in months of working together had Ren shown an interest in the project’s progress, despite being the Supreme Leader’s apprentice and the Heir Apparent. Ren had shown very little genuine interest in anything within the Order, beyond his training and missions regarding the Force. 

In Hux’s opinion, Ren’s hyper-focused interests in the Force, rather than those benefiting the Order as a whole, made him a poor choice of successor. 

And not that Hux would ever let the thought out of the durasteel trap of his mind, but he believes their current Supreme Leader suffers a similar issue and he fears that the Order will suffer for it. 

The pair of them seem to be plagued with the same sort of Force obsession that consumed the Empire’s leaders, eventually leading to the first Great Galactic War and the government’s horrific collapse. 

The Jedi and the Sith--the willing slaves to the Force that they are--have never been able to see beyond their petty moral quarrels, to recognize when the ground beneath their feet threatens to crumble. Consequently leaving those without the gift of Force sensitivity having to bear the brunt of the blow as the ground begins to crack, and the gilded ceilings of Empires cave in. 

Ren’s presence on Starkiller for this crucial demolition could be evidence of a change in this potentially dangerous pattern. That perhaps, after destroying yet another navigational instrument not even a cycle ago, Ren has had some sort of epiphany and has decided to take a more active role in the finer mechanics of the Order. 

Hux wouldn’t hold his breath. 

They had only walked a few paces away from their landing craft when Hux felt a dangerous shift in the Tor, a change in the crescendo of Ilum’s earth song. It only took a few tugs on the planet's filo to understand what had happened. 

Ilum has decided to set off one of the charges that had been wedged under its surface, and it so happens to be located beneath their feet.

Not long after Ilum pulled the trigger, Hux was acting with instincts that had been pummeled into his very psyche, courtesy of hours spent in a rainy valley with Saoirse.

Hux had widened his stance, bending his knees and tucking his elbows close to his ribs to stabilize his core, just as his mother had shown him. He inhaled three deep breaths and felt the vibrations of the earth beneath his feet begin to shift outwardly due to the explosion blooming underfoot. With a soft grunt and subtle roll of his wrists, Hux tugged roughly on Ilum’s filo and allowed the vibrations from the incoming blast to sing through the trunk of his legs until it rests in his core, successfully containing the blast. The sensation was similar to being roughly yanked out of hyper-speed without any stabilizers to compensate for the speed change, while simultaneously being headbutted in the gut by an aggravated Nerf. Hux allows himself to utter a soft grunt at the force of it, but otherwise does not let his stance waver. 

Then with a purposeful shift of his weight, Hux pivoted his entire body to the right, firmly stamping his right foot into the earth, channeling the blast down through his core and once again back into the Tor. The energy of the blast raged through the path Hux had channeled it down, tearing at the delicate strings of Ilum’s fraying filo. 

Just as the pressure of the blast was about to violently burst through the crust, Hux pushed his palms downward, sending the pressure careening into the planet’s core where he then commanded it through a few harsh tugs at Ilum’s filo to dissipate. Through the Tor, it complied only leaving a few minor quakes in its wake. 

The maneuver in its eternity only took a few seconds and the echoing shakes beneath their feet are minor, so Hux elects not to quell them, having already drawn enough attention to himself. He returns to parade rest to ride the minor quake out. All in all, he felt quite pleased with himself. 

That was until Ren tackled him.

Though Saoirse had taught him how to always be stable, he is unprepared for the impact of Ren’s body which is as dense as a boulder, and easily sends them both into the snow. 

Hux remembers feeling all the air in his body exorcise itself when his back hit the durasteel landing field that had been buried under an inch of snow. How the dense weight of Kylo Ren was heavy on his admittedly thin chest, making it difficult to breathe under the dead weight. Initially, Hux was overcome with an instinctual fear that Ren knew and would smother him into the newly fallen snow until the last of the Terrae was no more. 

Overcome with panic Hux had tried to push the other man off of him, but this proved to be an even more insurmountable task that is comparatively worse to moving physical mountains, which Hux has done. But in his struggle Hus can discern that Ren has decided to wrap his trunk-like arms around his shoulders, the action strangely feeling as if it was carried out with the intent of shielding him from something. 

The longer Hux is forced to lay in the snow, pinned under the weight of Ren, the more the whole of it begins to reek of uncharacteristic protectiveness. From the way Ren’s laid his bulky body across Hux’s own, to the way his meaty hand cradles the General’s head to his broad chest as if he is something precious, it all carries a degree of unfamiliar care. It’s far outside the norm of their admittedly turbulent relationship which has haphazardly been built upon the unstable bedrock of reluctant cooperation, and the adhering orders from a common commander.

Based on this alone, Hux concludes that Ren is having another one of his emotional episodes. It’s not necessarily a new issue, rather Ren’s emotional outburst has been a prevailing presence since his first day aboard the Finalizer. They mostly consisted of cutting remarks about Hux’s flavor of leadership, Ren muttering to himself while he stalks the halls of the  _ Finalizer, _ or physical outbursts that have decimated many training droids. 

At the time Hux had thought that this must be one of the physical outbursts if the sharp feeling in his ribs is anything to go by. Though Hux can’t for the life of him understand what he has done to provoke it. This time. 

Nonetheless, all Hux could seem to do was ride it out.

It took Ren a moment to realize that whatever danger he sensed has come and passed. Slowly, he rose his head from where he’d buried it into the curve of Hux’s shoulder and stared down at the miffed General. 

“Get off me you blundering oaf,” Hux had seethed.

Instead of moving off of Hux, Ren looked around. With a slow sweeping gaze, he surveyed the landscape in a borderline cautious manner. 

Once he was through, Ren looked down at Hux with that blank stare once more. “I don’t understand,” he breathed through the mask, the confusion evident in his wobbled voice.

“It was just a minor earthquake sir,” Fannell had supplied, abruptly drawing Ren’s attention away from Hux. 

“What?” Ren said.

“An earthquake,” she repeats, pushing up her glasses, “we get them quite frequently actually, thankfully this was a small one.” 

“No that-” Ren begins, but Hux had started to push more instantly at the other man’s broad chest.

“Get off me you blunder oaf,” the General hissed through his teeth, just loud enough for Ren to hear.

Ren seems to remember himself, that he’s laying on top of Hux in the middle of an airfield. Growling from deep within his chest, Ren rises to his feet. Then surprisingly, before Hux could get too far in sorting himself out, Ren ensnares Hux’s arms with his large paws and roughly hauls the General to his feet.

Once Hux has been sorted, Ren turns towards Fannell, choosing to loom over the slight women like the terrible shadow beast he is.

“Who chose to build the Order’s most critical asset on an unstable planet?” he spat. 

“Shifts in plate tectonics and fault lines are to be expected in any instance of terraforming and geoengineering, especially when it is conducted to the massive scale that has been for Starkiller,” Fannell replied easily to Ren’s jab, with squared shoulders and an unwavering gaze.

Ren holds her stare, dead eyes waiting to break and to the good doctor's credit, Fannell didn't budge. Instead, without breaking eye contact with Ren, she asks “may we press on General?”

Hux, who had been dusting the snow off of his cap to place it back upon his head, says a simple, “yes.”

Only then did Fannell break away from her and Ren’s staring contest, to once again begin leading the way towards the base. 

Hux, who foolishly thought that's had been the end of it, begins to trail behind the lead weaponeer. He makes it a good way from the original blast site before Ren clumsily wraps his grubby fingers around his arm, halting Hux’s steps. 

Ren tugged on Hux’s arm roughly, turning the General around to face him. The knight hauls him in close, putting an infuriating emphasis on the scant height difference between the pair. Ren’s face is absurdly close to Hux’s own, so much so the General swears he can see the shape of Ren’s eyes through the visor of that fucking bucket. 

For what feels like a millennium, Ren doesn’t say anything, just stares through those dead eyes like he’s trying to pick apart Hux’s mind with the gracelessness of a Wampa. And just when Hux’s about to rip his arm from Ren’s grasp, the beast speaks.

For a terrifying moment, Hux thinks he’s been caught. That Ren knows what he is. The sort of power that thrums through him, a steady song beating to the military march of his heart. Hux imagines Ren’s grip tightening, that the hands-on his arms will migrate to wrap around his throat to squeeze the life from him. Killing the last of the Terrae, silencing the Tor forever. 

But then Ren asks such an absurd question, all of Hux’s worries dispel. 

“You...are...are you alright?” The knight murmurs 

Hux blinks at the other man, stunned at the softness of his tone, at the concern. The shock the shoots through him is enough for Hux to have forgotten that only moments ago Ren had tackled him into the snow and how stupid the accusation is. But then the General remembers, his mouth contorting into a familiar sneer. 

“Quite” Hux scoffs while ripping his arm from Ren’s grasp, “no thanks to you tackling me into the ground like some deranged Wookie.” He then fixes his cap, and stalks off after Fannell, leaving Ren to his foolish fantasies. He elects to ignore how his heart is still steadily pounding against the cage of his chest, still filled with the fear of almost being caught and admittedly at the solid feeling of Ren against his chest. 

Ren eventually stalks after him, in that ghoulish way he does, and remains about as talkative as usual after the incident, and Hux thought that it now well and truly was the end of it.

How foolish he had been back then.

_ “...In the early days of the galaxy, the Grand High Chancellor of Horla walked along the shores of the planet’s green seas and continued to walk until he reached the grassy edges of the capital city. There he sat under a Julip tree, where he remained in a meditative state until the first snowfall collected on his shoulders and he reached true peace through a mystical feeling of connectedness that we now know as the Force; thus the first Jedi Knight was born in the winter suns of Horla...” _

_ -Jedi Enchiridion; 2nd Edition. _

***

_ “...It has recently been discovered, along the cliffs of Yellium’s ragged coast, that the best way to kill a Terrae is to drown them. Deep seas are best, the wretched creatures will find no soil, no stone, and no crystal to ground themselves with and thus will not be able to counter-attack. So I implore you my fellow Knights to guide your Generals to take to the seas. Use their [the Terrae’s] fickle emotions to corral the beasts, then wrestle them to submission, and submerge them in torrent waters...don’t let them fight the current.” _

_ Jedi Knight Hora Bittle, of Kent _

_ Written to the Republic fleet. _

_ Concerning the Terrae and the Sea.  _

When Hux had been still but a toddling babe, his Mother became Maratelle on the gray cliffs of Kel, where she had picked him up by his ankles and lobbed him off the seafaring cliff side. Hux had sailed with flailing limbs through the salty air until he splashed into the raging waters of the Northern Arkanian sea. Above him, Maratelle stood with her strong arms crossed and commanded Hux to swim for his life. 

Hux had struggled valiantly against the raging waters of the frigid sea, desperately fighting the current with each stroke of his short limbs as they crashed him repeatedly into the rocky cliff side and drowned him under each collapsing white cap. 

His struggles garnered no sympathy from Maratelle, who loomed over him with her earth fire hair whipping in the wind and skirts billowing around her thick ankles. There she remained ever apathetic until Hux’s orange head had disappeared under the swells longer than she was comfortable with. So the next time Hux’s small body had crashed into the cliffs, it was his Mother who stomped into the earth and erected a stone slab. Hux was carried by a white cap onto this jutting piece of stone, where he flopped against it and remained there like a dying fish as he desperately caught his breath. 

“The Terris Gerit and the Terrae met their end in the swells of terrible seas such as these!” His Mother had called over the roar of the water, “you must not let the swells drown you, Armitage, hear the Tor and find your handholds to crawl your way out and always remember, even when your head has been beaten bloody, you do not bow!” Maratelle then stomped her foot, ripping the stone ledge out from under Hux, sending him into the deep once more.

Hux thinks on this lesson, as he is now drowning in the growing hysteria of a skittish people, while his holo projection is sitting in one of the uncomfortable leather chairs of the newly minted Krennic Assembly Hall, on the Order populated capital planet, Pelanna. 

After the events of Starkiller, news of the Resistance's new hope and the traitor had spread like wildfire and easily created great waves of fear that shuttered through the Order, like shock waves of a terrible earthquake that Hux had no chance of quelling before its effects became devastating.

This fear had quickly turned into public wide hysteria, leading to people accusing each other of treason and riots in the streets, while a handful of minor public officials fanned the flames. If this was not enough, the Resistance had taken their near-victory at Starkiller and used it as cannon fodder for heavier attacks not only on Order’s Western borders but the Northern ones as well, where critical Ore generating planets lied. For months there’s been nothing but a battle which litters the void of space with the carnage of starships belonging to both the Resistance and the Order, with no reprieve in the blows being dealt with the collect the dead. 

The _ Finalizer  _ itself has taken several crippling blows, a particularly catastrophic hit had been dealt with the bridge when their shielding systems had faltered enough for a vengeful X-Wing to shatter the transparisteel viewpoint. 

In the thick of that disaster, Hux had to be tugged off the bridge by Mitaka’s surprisingly firm grip, before the command center could seal itself off, to preserve the rest of the ship. Through the closing doors, Hux had watched three of his bridge crew get sucked through the shattered viewpoint, and into the unforgiving vacuum of space where their blood vaporized while the oxygen was ripped from their lungs. 

Just as he did on Starkiller, Hux had fought against the lieutenant’s grip, desperate to take their place, the words of his command oath ran rapidly through his head--as they often did--reminding Hux that it was his duty as a commanding officer to die, so that another may live. 

It had taken Mitaka--soft-spoken Mitaka--wailing; “Sir! pull yourself together...please...we need you to win this,” for Hux to come away from the panic enough to pop a few stimulants into his mouth and order the surviving crew to relocate to the secondary bridge where they launched an aerial counter strike. They’d lost seventy officers that day and a near hundred aerial strike troopers. Those numbers run through Hux’s head every night cycle as he forces himself to lie in the cradle of scratchy standard sheets, staring up at the ceiling where the ghosts of terrified faces of those three officers have mounted themselves. 

And in all of this, the members of High Command had looked to their Supreme Leader for guidance, but since Ren’s departure from the  _ Finalizer, _ their pleas for governance had been met with radio silence.

Fucking radio silence. 

Snoke’s silence, Hux understands. The creature of a man always having been a selfish leader, practically eager to let the casualties of dedicated people surmount. So Hux had not been particularly surprised that their Supreme Leader abandoned them.

Even Ren’s silence towards High Command was a bit expected. Though part of him loathes admitting to, the man is born of Republic stock, thus he has never had the sort of devotion to the Order that those who were forced to rebuild from the shattered ceilings of a collapsed Empire.

But Ren's silence towards Hux’s countless messages? Unacceptable. 

Oh how quickly Hux’s neediness for Ren that had consumed him in the med bay, easily evaporated after the bridge’s destruction and another com sent to voicemail. Once it had become clear his husband had once again chosen Snoke over him, that longing sort of need for comfort had been quickly replaced by comfortable, and familiar fury. 

Ren’s blinding devotion to that creature is something that has become increasingly frustrating each time Snoke proves himself a weak leader that will surely lead the Order to ruin. Not to mention the countless times he has made it clear that Ren is nothing more than a tool to him. Something to ruin, break, and then be replaced by a shiny version. 

And yet the Knight obeys him without fault, continually putting himself through the wringer to please Snoke. He continually ignores anything Hux has to say on the matter, citing the General’s ignorance in the ways of the Force in such an irritable tone that it can make Hux feel as useless as Brendol had claimed him to be. It’s enough to frustrate the General on the best of days, while others can make him positively apocalyptic, turning him into a snarling beast itching to draw blood from a cornered prey. 

This is not mentioning the countless days in between, frustration and unchecked rage, that Hux’s gloves (which now hide his bloody cuticles that had been bitten raw) creak with the restraint, to not strand Ren on a stone planet and punch a crater through the crust with his bare fists. Just to show the Knight what he can do without the Force, that Hux does not need its pathetic mysticisms when he has the Tor. 

And even if the pair of them didn’t have enough power between them to create an entirely new galaxy if they so desired, Hux knows enough from what he’s learned from his Mothers’, that marriages are meant to have certain foundations.

And Hux is sure the bedrock is communicating to your spouse as to whether your master has decided your usefulness has been maxed out, so he is not left riddled with crippling anxiety. And he is almost positive that they include not abandoning your husband while he tries to maintain a battlefront and the state of the nation while it all threatens to crumble around him. And there must be something in there about holding your husband at night while he sobs in the dark of your quarters, after having gazed through a passing viewpoint and spotting the dead face of his favorite linguistics officer as she floated on by. 

And--

And.

And so, in the face of all this, Hux grips tightly to his fury and uses it as a handhold which he clings to desperately and determined not to drown as he hauls himself up a most looming cliffside...and into this fucking meeting that Secretary of State Beats has called now that the events occurring planetside have officially gotten out of hand.

For the sake of this fucking meeting, Hux has hunkered down in the Finalizer’s war room during the Gamma shift after hours of mele, instead of in his bunk for a fitful 3 hours of sleep. His companions in his misery are his datapad with the dated meeting notes pulled up and four cups of caf--three of which are empty--and a packet of stimulants that he fully intends to take with the remaining cup of caf. Chief Medical Officer Runa can kiss his ass. 

Before him is a paper map of the battlefront littered with miniature figures of star destroyers and fighter craft alike, which had been pulled from a child’s set--after an intelligence compromise, they had to revert to archaic methods--an are strategically scattered across the stars. Overhead hangs a sparking electrical panel that had come loose during evasive maneuvers that had led to this wing of the ship taken on heavy cannon fire, luckily there were enough mouse droids to spare to dedicate a pair to diligently repairing the panel. Outside the door Hux can hear the scurrying steps of what he knows to be his engineers and mechanics, racing about to address other damages, and Mother Hoa it has been a terrible day and this meeting Hux knows will just be the icing on the cake. 

Through the large holo screen at the room’s forefront, Hux observes the other faces that are seated around the polished conference table back in Krennic Hall, there are only two vacant chairs and they speak volumes. Each official sits with rigged posture behind a durasteel plated name tag which proudly states their name and position, some of his cohorts look calm and well put together, while others appear to be as haggard as Hux. 

Secretary Beats is looking particularly wrecked, with the horrible bruising under his eyes and the way his wrinkled hands shake even as they grasp at his datapad like it's the only thing anchoring him to the planet. After the harrowing days, Hux has been subjected to on the battlefront, the General can muster up a smidge of sympathy for the former Imperial who has been tasked with maintaining the homefront, which in itself has become more wartorn every day. 

Once the clock strikes 0900, Beats clears his throat, upsetting whatever phlegm has accumulated at the back and compelling Hux to grind his teeth together, which in turn causes them to ache underneath their white-colored caps. 

“Welcome everyone,” Beats begins, “now I presume you are all aware as to why I’ve called you here today, but for the sake of the record let me be perfectly fra--”

And that's where Hux’s sleep-deprived mind pitches off, the bland baritone of Beats’ voice fading into oblivion. His thoughts are easily consumed by other things such as battle strategies for the upcoming days that will hopefully lead them to victory. His eyes trained on the figurines before him, envisioning them in combat, each strike leading to numerous victories or bitter defeats that leaves the Order without critical resources. Hux’s mind reels with either horrific or triumphant possibilities of tomorrow, the vividity of it all are terrifying in a way that sends his heart hammering as rapid as a trapped Raanatha’s.

Terrible Tor no more losses. He begs internally when his mind forces him to watch the Finalizer fall to the surface of the underlying planet, where it crumples on impact. 

Slowly Hux reaches for the packet of stimulants and drags them closer with the pad of his forefinger. With trembling fingers, he pushes against the circular tablets and their plasta encasing, until they puncture the furna-foil. Gingerly Hux sluggishly pushes the pair of them into his mouth where they rest smoothly on the bed of his tongue, before toppling in between his molars where he works to grind them into bitter-tasting dust. As Hux chews slowly on the chalky tablets, his relentless mind begins to think about Ren. It wickedly ponders if the other man still feels any love for Hux, wonders if the knight would mourn if the General fell, whether Ren would consider his husband an acceptable loss--

“--General Hux?”

Hux’s eyes bounce away from the map laid out before him. Oh. Fuck. Everyone is looking at him now, beady eyes expectant. Hux swallows the grounded up tablets, a film of sweat breaks out on his forehead. Fuck, somebody asked him a question.  _ What was the question?  _ Hux thinks, desperately racking his mind.  _ What was the question? What. Was. The. Question. Fucking shit. Shit. Fuck. Fucking curse the motherfucking Sith hells, the maker, fucking shit, fuc-- _

“I’m sorry?” Hux asks, folding his hands in front of him in a feeble attempt to seem engaged but simply confused on the phrasing of whatever question he’s been asked.

“I was just curious as to if you had received any word from Lord Ren, General Hux?” A voice says, causing Hux’s eyes to focus on the thin form of Secretary of Education Kila

She sits primly next to Attorney General Fittus, batting her long lashes and with her rouged lips twisted into an insinuating smirk; like she knows that Ren is ignoring his coms and she knows exactly why, that his husband is warming her bed right now, and just waiting to fuck her into the bedclothes after this accursed meeting is through, while Hux remains aboard the  _ Finalizer  _ trembling with anxious anger. 

Hux glares at her, seething with a rage that he is struggling to keep in check while in his exhaustive state. “No, Lord Ren has been away completing the final trials of his apprenticeship and has not had any contact with the  _ Finalizer _ .” He says through gritted teeth, exercising every bit of control he can to keep the venom in his mouth at bay, though he feels positively volcanic.

Hux wishes, just this one time, that he was gifted with the Force so that he could throttle the bitch through the holo. Maybe replace her with someone competent, and doesn’t make advances on his husband.

“Curious,” Kila blinks, “I thought perhaps, given your... _ close _ relationship, that he may have kept in communication with you, even though there has been rumor of a... _ less than, productive _ working relationship between the pair of you as of late.”

_ You insufferable bitch. I’m married to him. I wear his ring and he mine. He loves me and only me. You fucking-- _

“We are professionals, Secretary Kila, and understand our duty to the Order comes above all else, especially in times of great unrest and contempt,” Hux says evenly, reaching for his cup of caf. He forces his hands to remain steady to not rattle the cup and takes a long pull of the bitter liquid. Hux maintains eye contact with the witch and hopes she can feel him burning her with the hearth fires of his fury. Hux swears the next time he’s planetside, he’ll bury her in the ground. 

“Doesn’t he normally train with Snoke?” Secretary of Health Doctor Kenma says, drawing Hux’s attention away from the cathartic process of burning Kila alive with his mind. 

Hux as calmly as he can, set his cup down, the ceramic clinking gently against the table’s durasteel surface. “As I’ve said, Ren is away completing final trails of his apprenticeship, and though he was called away from the  _ Finalizer _ by Snoke himself to do this, I am uncertain as to whether they remain together or not.”

Secretary of Commerce Jerome, a stout middle-aged man with an unfortunate sort of face covered in dents and a thick mustache, makes a grumbling sort of noise that rattles the loose skin about his neck. “It would be unbecoming of a teacher to abandon his pupil at the end of their education, so I am left to assume Lord Ren is with Supreme Leader Snoke.” He comments, a chorus of agreeing murmurs follow. 

“Yes well, Supreme Leader Snoke has elected to essentially abandon his nation in a great hour of need, I’m sure he has known qualms doing so to his pupil.” Secretary of Energy Kott’s comments, twiddling the stylist of their datapad between nimble fingers. 

“Not to mention the fact that no one seems to be able to reach them, and the citizens are understandably afraid and seek guidance from their leaders...so I move for the motion to a transition power,” Beats states, bringing the murmuring of the room to a sudden silence and Hux’s eyebrows to his hairline. 

The First Order is a government strongly rooted in the military, its presence prominent in its leadership as well as the daily lives of its citizens; from their educational institutions that provide decently paved paths for those further pursuing academia and those who wish to go into a trade, to their social services which pulls orphans off the streets and dresses them in whites to shelter them, desperately desired structure, and a purpose (FN-2187 liked to think himself special and oppressed by being only called by a number, but everyone in the service is assigned an ID serial to memorize, he could have chosen a name for himself and the Order would have gladly called him it, it's not their fault he never had the guts to name himself).

Given this, it only makes sense that the government is as influenced as the rest. This means after the Supreme Leader and the Heir Apparent, the Secretary of Defence, the highest-ranking military official the Order has to offer, is the next to succeed in power. The current Secretary of Defense just so happens to be Hux, and the only one who is eligible to challenge him in that seat would be the Heir Apparent spouse, which also happens to be him.

With his nerves already thrumming Hux takes up his cup again, and downs the rest of his caf, while everyone else at the table comes to this same conclusion. 

“It would ideally be temporary,” Beats presses on through the silence, “just until Supreme Leader Snoke and Lord Ren can be made contact with to discern the true nature of their absence, but if this cannot be done or if their collective negligence is proven, legal action would be taken and the transition of power to remain permanent. Either way, until then the people of this nation need a leader and we all need a direction to follow...without the possibility of too many cooks in the galley. So yes I believe a transition of power should be in order, of course, if the vote passes.” 

Beats clears his throat again, then waits patiently for everyone’s response, his eyes every so often shifting to glance at Hux, whose right leg has begun to bounce uncontrollably underneath the table. 

“I second the motion,” Jerome declares while pounding his fist on the table before him and giving Hux an approving nod, which sends a pleasant flutter in the General’s chest. He and Jerome always got along well enough, he considered the man a friend and a worthy confidant. So receiving his approval is never necessary but always nice. 

“Well, I dissent,” Kenma counters quickly, looking a bit pale. His watery blue eyes flick over to glance at Hux. “Nothing against you General, you’ve already proven yourself an exceptional leader,” he assures the General, “but I worry about what would become of us if either the Supreme Leader or Lord Ren returned and found we acted without their consent.”

Knotts scoffs and ceases their fidgeting.“We need no consent Kenema,” they respond to Kenma's frets, with a chiding click of their tongue. “After all, it is not as if this a coup, we are well within our governing rights as a member of High Command and Supreme Leader Snoke himself has no right to oppose us in this,” Knotts continues, “besides it’s not like either he or Lord Ren were born into their roles, they are both elected officials, first Snoke by the people and Ren by him in return.”

“Not to mention it is they who have abandoned their people, not us.” Secretary of Agriculture Adams, speaks up after having been quiet for most of the meeting, he voice creaks with the effort.

“Exactly,” Knotts agrees with a snap of their fingers. 

“It’s not necessarily the legal action I am wary of,” Kenma grumbles, earning another scoff from Knotts. 

“We all swore to do a duty to the people of the First Order and that is precisely what we are doing if you were so afraid of Supreme Leader Snoke and his gifts, then you shouldn’t have taken those vows.” Knotts lectures with their dainty features turned into a slight scowl. 

“Yes Kenma, worry not about what will become of us, but rather the Order if we do not act here and now.” Jerome urges with a few more resounding whacks of his fist against the table’s surface, just for good measure.

“Right well shall we vote then?” Beats asks with a quirk of a bushy white brow, his question earns him a series of noises responded in affirmation. 

Beats rises from his chair. “Alright, all in favor of transitioning rank and power to Secretary of Defence General Armitage Hux and revoking Supreme Leader Snoke as well as his Heir Apparent: Lord Kylo Ren's rank and power. Given that they have failed to adhere to their sworn oaths to the First Order by rendering themselves willingly absent and unwilling to respond to the call of duty during this time of great national crisis.”

Nearly every hand in the room rises, save for Kila’s dainty appendage and Kenma’s freckled palm, which Hux’s isn’t very surprised about. 

And though he already is feeling stretched as thin as a hair, ever the duty-bound soldier, Hux votes for the transition of power onto himself. The citizens of the Order need leadership from someone who is unquestionably steady, dedicated, and understands how to soothe the erratic hearts of people who currently feel powerless in this war. Hux believes he can provide such leadership. After all, once one has scaled out of a raging sea as mere a babe, moved actual mountains with flicks of their wrist, and has held together an exploding planet; what more is steadying a trembling government? The foundation is there after all. Hux will just have to repair the cracks. Simple. At least he tells himself so. 

“Alright, and oppose?” Beats asks, staring deliberately at Kila and Kenma, who both raise their hands. “Alright, the majority is in General Hux’s favor, Major General Fittus you have the floor,” Beats concludes, seating himself once more. 

Fittus takes her cue and stands to her full height which is admittedly not very much, even in her modestly heeled dress shoes. Her short arms relax into parade rest and she trains her sharp earthy gaze upon Hux, who also rises from his chair. His knees creak a little in protest over the movement and when his body is fully upright, he wobbles a bit to the left but thankfully no one on the other side of the holo notices. 

Fittus clears her throat, she speaks the next words with acute clarity, so that they could never be lost in translation on even the oldest data chip. “In the time of crisis do you accept this duty of leadership as it has been trusted to you through a vote of your peers of High Command? 

“I accept,” Hux agrees straight back and with his head held high, but his hands are still trembling so he balls them into tight fists.

Fittus holds his gaze steady and continues. “Do you understand that through this transition of power you accept to conduct the duties of the Supreme Leader as prescribed in article 1 of the First Order’s Legislative Code as it was ratified, 3016 Lovorea 24?”

“Yes,” Hux affirms with as much conviction as he can muster.

“Do you understand that this power that has been bestowed upon you by your peers can be revoked at any time if it is determined that you are showing blatant negligence to the nation which you serve, abusing your rank for personal gain, or if you fail to abide and adhere to the law?”

“Yes.”

“Very good,” Fittus praises, as if Hux just passed a particularly hard test, and in a way, he feels like he has.

“Now please raise your right hand, and repeat after me,” Fittus instructs while raising her right hand. Hux reflects the action, feeling a bit underdressed for the occasion while in his three-day-old uniform.

“I do solemnly swear,” Fittus begins

“I do solemnly swear,” Hux repeats.

“That I will faithfully execute the Office of Supreme Leader of these planets, united under the First Order,” Fittus continues, before pausing and waiting for Hux’s reply.

“That I will faithfully execute the Office of Supreme Leader of these planets, united under the First Order.” Hux echos, with as much conviction as he can muster. 

“And will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Legislative Code of the First Order.” Fittus finishes with intent eyes.

“And will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Legislative Code of the First Order,” Hux quickly follows. He finishes with a customary quick salute, directed towards his fellow members of High Command and the people of the Order.

Fittus returns the salute, mustering a shadow of a smile. “Congratulations General Hux, you are now the Supreme Leader Elect.”

Sighing, Hux sits once more.  _ Mother Hoa help him. _

_ “Have pride my comrades. My friends. My brothers and sisters in arms. Even when your hands have been broken, your teeth pulled from your skulls, and when the water of the sea fills your lungs: you do not bow! Qui vivat Terrae!” _

_ Terris Gerit Generalis Meloanna Fern  _

_ Last words were spoken following the battle of Yellium. _

_ Concerning Concaluit cor Terrae(Drowning of the Earth). _

***

_ My Dearest Mari, _

_ You would not believe the vibrancy of blooms we’ve seen in our journey about the galaxy. The potent pink hues of the Jakkuian desert flower alone is something to behold. I’ve managed to collect and press a few blooms for you between the pages of that abhorred archaic novel you sent me away with. Truthfully, Mari, that book is terrible. I’ll never understand how you favor the stumbling tales of old when you have the entire library at your fingertips via the expansive holonet. Teasing aside my love I am eager to return to your side, for I miss you so.  _

_ Forever yours, _

_ Saoirse.  _

_ A letter received and held dear. _

Since the incident on Starkiller a few months back, that protectiveness that Hux had borne witness to passing over Ren’s brown eyes, like a thin glaze over a smelting pot, had yet to abandon the looming man. Instead, that odd protectiveness has lingered, driving the Knight to accompany Hux every time he makes the trek down to Starkiller. It remained in steadying hands around his elbow during violent lift shifts, a blocking arm to prevent Hux from careening into an erratic construction droid’s path, and near gentle grasp around the wrist to assist Hux in stumbling around the knee-high snow. 

At first, Hux had been irritated by the other man’s hovering, violently shrugging off every touch, feeling each gesture by the knight to be some underhanded slight at his independence and general capability as a commanding officer. But then as Ren’s hovering persisted and turned into questioning that felt less like an interrogation and more smililar to gentling prodding, Hux quickly realized that Ren was clumsily trying to make some sort of human connection. Which turned out to be something Hux was not necessarily opposed to. Hux found himself gradually reciprocating these strange acts of protectiveness, a gentle hand here and kind thought there. Soon that protectiveness became closely coupled with a fondness developed due to long exposure to Ren’s presence for the fondness.

Then suddenly, this fondness turned into something warmer yet. It manifested itself in the form of indescribable heat that set his skin aflame whenever he’d caught a glimpse of the other man’s maskless face, a sort of heat that forced Hux’s heart to metamorphose dumbfounded into something softer than he’d left the academy with. 

Initially, the feeling had terrified him, despite his dexterity in terms of military affairs, Hux has never been fond of disruptions to his ecosystem, and the bucket of cold water that was his unexpected emotional attraction to Ren did just that. But that sort of skittishness was unbecoming of a Terris Gerit, so now Hux finds himself here; Standing before his fellow commander’s door sweating nervously in nothing but his slate gray civies, holding a small bundle of frost Tulips he’d trimmed from Ilum’s surface.

A week ago, the  _ Finalizer  _ had received permission from High Command for a week of shore leave at a nearby Order loyal planet, to refuel and resupply. The news immediately had the gears in Hux’s head-turning and while lying awake in his bunk he’d decide that this would be a preferable time to make his affections for the dark-haired man known. 

Admittedly Hux was not entirely sure how he was going to go about this, he’s seen a few holo films, but he has had no experience in any form of an intimate relationship (sexual, romantic, or otherwise). Not that this bothers him. You do not need to leave a trail of broken hearts to find your match, and he’s never felt very comfortable with giving any part of himself over without a semblance of trust established, and one has to work hard to win that with Hux. 

But it's also not if he had anybody ask advice on the subject of courtship. His Mothers were dead and though he hands several people he’d tentatively called friends (close colleagues at least, brothers in the war at most), there is something about shedding a layer of his skin and exposing the soft flesh of his heart to them, that makes Hux extraordinarily uncomfortable. 

So like most things, Hux was forced to figure it out for himself. Which of course lead to a bumbling number of aborted attempts consisting of corner Ren in the frigid halls of the nearly complete base, where he would prepare to speak his feelings plain until he’d caught sight of those deep brown eye through the visor of that accursed mask and then Hux would circle to rambling about droid maintenance. That is until he finally manages to snag Ren outside the developing base command center four cycles ago, during the bare bones of the delta shift. He’d been uncharacteristically bare-faced, all pale luminescent skin covered in moles, a blank galaxy full of rocky planets Hux desperately wished to conquer. He managed to snag Ren with a croaky call of his name that was reminiscent of a pubescent boy. With the bare brown eyes on him, Hux had nearly once again abandoned his prospects, but for the courage deep within to clumsy inquired about the other man’s plans for shore leave. 

When Ren had confirmed he had none, Hux had pressed onward with clenched fists tucked behind his back and asked with pathetic timidness if the Knight would be opposed to accompanying Hux for a meal other than what  _ the Finalizer’s _ galley had to offer. With a smile full of crooked teeth that had Hux’s heart in his throat, Ren had said no he would not be opposed, that he’d loved to have dinner. Then after a glance around the corridor, Ren quickly pressed his plush mouth to the peak of Hux’s cheekbone, before retreating down the corridor. Hux had stood there staring after him completely dumbfounded, a lone hand ghosting over what he was sure to be an imprint of that kiss. 

Now he stands here, with a trembling hand raised to the keypad mounted to the wall outside of Ren’s door. There was a film of sweat breaking out over his brow and the fabric of his trousers felt itchy against his skin. 

“Courage now Armitage,” Hux muttered to himself before pressing the page bell. There was a sharp chime, before Ren’s low baritone crackled through the above speaker. 

“Yes.” the disembodied voice of Ren barked, startling Hux. 

Recovering the General rolled back his shoulders, then bent closer to the speaker and spoke into it. 

“Commander Ren,” He began voice cracking. Hux winced then cleared his throat before carrying on. “This is General Hux,” he gave a pause, Hux’s eyes scanning the hallway for any other forms of life, before nearly whispering the last bit. “I’ve come to retrieve you for ou-our outing.”

“Oh,” Ren breathed and then “give me a minute.”

Hux releases his finger from the corresponding button, letting the acting hand fall loosely to his side once again. He only had to wait a handful of seconds before Ren’s door swooshed open, revealing the object of his affections. 

Ren stood before him barefaced and silky haired. He dressed in an awkwardly fitting black tunic that was slightly too tight in the shoulders and sleeves that ended just above Ren’s wrist bones. The tunic was paired with an equally ill-fitting pair of black trousers that were tucked into calf-high leather boots which were the only things that fit him properly. The garments all looked like something an adolescent Ren had owned before he’d grown into his skin, now that Ren was a man the pieces looked like unpleasant second skins waiting to be shredded. 

Ren sheepishly scratches at the back of his neck. “I-I’m sorry, I wanted to look nice,” He begins to explain awkwardly, “and I’d thought these would still fit...but I guess not.” He finished lamely, gaze falling to the floor. 

“Nonsense,” Hux protested with a scoff that drew Ren’s attention away from the floor and back to the General, “you look very handsome.” He then offers the night a small smile and the flowers that had remained forgotten in his hands until now. 

Ren beamed, his woes about his appearance seemingly forgotten for the moment. “You brought me flowers,” he whispered and took the flowers gingerly in his large hands. With an oddly soft smile, he pressed his nose to them and inhaled their scent. “They’re lovely,” Ren breathed long lashes batting in Hux’s direction, which sent the General’s heart right into his throat. 

Hux’s now empty hands began to fiddle with the cuffs of his stiff tunic, a blush surely staining the back of his neck. “Yes well erm, shall we?” he said lamely, offering his arm out to Ren in a similar way he’s seen countless leading men do in several romance holos. 

With that crooked grin, Ren nestled his large hand in the cradle of Hux’s elbow. Ren’s touch alone was enough. With the knight still carrying the flowers, they set off towards the  _ Finalizer’s  _ main starboard hanger where a shuttle awaited them to whisk them away into what Hux was sure even then to be a bright future. 

_ Tidge,  _

_ The days I spend away from you are horrible. There is nothing here. Nothing except my anger. My grief. I failed my mission. I have failed Snoke. I feel as if I’ve failed you. I’ve tried to kill the softness of Ben Solo, be he remains rooted to the earth of my heart where he is rotting. I’m trying to be strong for you gioia because I know you despise weakness, but I feel myself crumbling. I long for you and our bed. I long to run my fingers through your hair and for you to press your lips against my sternum and take away this awful pain. I long to come home to you.  _

_ -Kylo  _

_ A letter never sent.  _

__

__ __

**Author's Note:**

> Well, there's the first bit! I hoping to have part 2 sometime around March. Thank you for taking a peek, and comments and kudos are appreciated but never expected.
> 
> Catch ya later. 
> 
> -Eiramma.
> 
> P.S. This work also has a playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2wZiPdlEAlO3T1ymY0uOVA


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